Hank Venture, Babe Magnet
by beb
Summary: Continuing the parallel universe there Henchman 21 becomes Gary, the Venture's new bodyguard. Hank Venture has been sent off to get a job, only to be waylaid by a beautiful girl with a very big gun. Introducing Jill O'Lantern, girl with a grudge.
1. Chapter 1

"I don't know why Dad is making me get a job at the mall. Hank Venture was slumped in the front seat of the experimental atomic powered car, arms crossed indignantly across his chest.

"The dignity of labor?" Gary suggested, from behind the steering wheel, then laughed, "well hardly."

"I had a perfectly good operation with Hankco." Hank was dressed in a suit that too small and twenty years out of date. It was one of his fathers.

"Selling your father's TV remotes back to him all the time isn't a business model," Gary said.

"Then why won't he let me join the OSI? I passed all their entrance tests!"

"I know, I read the report in your dossier. You passed, but not with flying colors and they rated your overall performance as 'erratic and unreliable'."

"They're just making up excuses to not take me." Hank insisted.

"Well, D'uh! Part of their mission is to keep you alive, not to send you out on missions to get yourself killed."

"Like Pop even cares whether I'm alive. He likes Dean best. He always treats me like some kind of wart he's be glad to be rid of."

"Now, Hank you know your father loves you," Gary began but didn't know how to finish that. On the one hand Dr. Thaddeus Venture had been willing to break Federal and International law to create a clone farm to raise duplicates of his two boys, of which this Hank was the fifteenth and last. But he couldn't tell him about that. On the other hand, on a day to day basis Gary had seem Dr. Venture groan, complain and belittle his two sons, but Hank moreso than Dean. "In any case," Gary continued after a moment, "look at this as a chance to get out of the house, see other people, have some money of your own. You know - be your own man?"

"Well, there is that," Hank agreed reluctantly. "Even if it seems like it more Pop wanting me out of the home and all that."

"You'll get to see Dermot every day. You might even get a job with him," Gary said.

"Yeah, that would be nice." Hank's face lit up for a moment, then he frowned, "Dermot said his employer had it in for him and wouldn't hire anyone he knew. So I guess that's out."

Gary didn't ask why that would be so, his few contact with the large blond kid had not been positive. Dermot was self-absorbed, boastful, and not above stealing things even from friends. He reminded Gary too much of his own misspent youth.

"And for some reason Pop has really taken a dislike to him. He won't let him come over anymore."

Gary knew why but couldn't tell Hank that either. Dermot was Hank's half-brother. Venture was afraid that if Dermot ever found that out then he's try to move in on the scientist. That sounded pretty weak to Gary. He suspected that Dr. Venture was in some way embarrassed about how Dermot came about.

"Hey, what's that?" Hank pointed to a truck pulled off the road a short way ahead of them. The hood was up and a girl was bent over the side looking at the engine. The girl was young, slender to positively skinny, with a gingham shirt knotted just under her breasts and a pair of Daisy Dukes. Her hair hung from the sides of her head in two large pigtails. "We should help."

Gary was still distracted thinking about who Dermot's mother could be that he pulled the X-13 to a halt behind the truck without thinking. It was an old Chevy from the 60s, a combination of rust and blue.

Hank hopped out of his side of the car and trode towards the girl. "Hi! Need some - Help!" The last word ended as a scream as the girl straightened up from the truck, holding an enormous revolver in her two hands. She pointed it straight at Hank It let go with an deafening "Boom!"

The bullet whinged off the X-13. A huge cloud of smoke poured from the gun, to be followed by two more loud booms.

Gary was already in motion, flooring the accelerator of the experimental car. Even atomic power doesn't get an eight ton vehicle moving quickly but by the third shot the X-13 was even with a petrified Hank Venture. Gary leaned over and threw open the passenger door. "Get in!" he shouted.

Hank threw himself inside the car, almost piling on top of Gary. He scrambled up in his seat and yanked the door shut. Gary dodged around the girl who had tried to step in front of the X-13 and was doing 60 by the time the car had bumped back on the road.

"What the hell,"Hank said when he finally got his breathing under control. "You try to be a Good Samaritan and someone points a gun at you. Sheesh!"

Gary was too busy driving at an excessive speed down the rural road and looking in the rear-view mirror to see if the girl was following to answer. The road curved too much and was lined with trees to be able to see far back. It didn't look like she was following them.

Abruptly he braked and turned off the road onto a rutted path running alongside a corn field and a small forest. This was a old farmer's right of way, linking the two parts of a farm that had been cut in half when the road went through. A culvert spanned the ditch on either side of the road allowing farm equipment to cross the paved highway. The trail was two lanes of packed soil where grass no longer grew. Gary bumped along it at a fair clip. About a quarter mile in the path disappeared, ending next to an old fencepost. Grass extended beyond. Gary drove on, flattening waist high stalks of corn growing in the shadow of the woods. Another county road could be seen in the distance.

"Where are we going?" Hank asked as the slapping stalks finally got his attention. "This is an odd way to get to the Mall."

"State Road 6 is up ahead. It parallels 4 along here. I want to get back to that site and see what's going on there. But from a direction that girl isn't expecting us."

"So, what about my job interview?"

"It'll hold. Just don't tell them you were delayed by a crazy girl taking pot-shots at you."

"Two. Two crazy girls," Hank corrected. "There's your girlfriend, Kim. And now this girl. Say, did you notice how cute she was?"

"I had other things on my mind - like getting you out of there."

"Well, I thought she was pretty cute - in a scrawny sort of way. And Of course Kim totally hot. And totally wants me." Hank slid down in his car seat and folded his arms behind his head. "Being chased by two hot girls... I guess that makes me a Babe Magnet!"

The X-13 had reached the other road and Gary turned on to it, heading back the way they came. "You do realize," he said, "that both of them are trying to kill you? You're a magnet alright, just not a Babe one."

"Oh." He crossed his arms over his stomach in a pout. "Why do people have it in for me? What did I ever do to them?" he whined.

Gary could have mentioned a half dozen reasons off the top of his head. Obnoxious, clueless, vain, ill-informed... But most people didn't reach for a gun just because someone was annoying. Hank's problem was that he was a Venture. And lots of people had it in for his father, or even his grandfather, the certified genius, Jonas Venture. Just being born into the Venture clan had marked Hank as a target for life.

They can to a cross-road about a mile past the Venture Compound. Gary turned down it and a half mile later, turned back on to their original road, CR4, and followed it towards the site of the trap. It was a pleasant August day, bright sunlight, hot, but dry.

Gary slowed down as they can to the spot of the ambush, but the ancient truck was gone. He stopped the X-13 short of the scene and got out. "Stay here," he told Hank.

He could see the tracks where the truck had pulled off the two-lane highway and parked. Drops of oil in the dirt told him that the truck - and therefore the girl - had been waiting there for a while. There were quite a few foot-prints around where the truck had sat, indicating that the girl had been restlessly waiting for Hank and him to appear.

Something about the footprints seemed odd so he bent down to look at them more closely.

"What are you looking for," Hank asked.

Gary sighed. "I thought I told you to wait in the X-13?"

"Hey, no shells. She must have been a professional, knew all about picking up evidence after her."

"She was holding a revolver, Hank. They don't eject shells.

"Oh."

Gary straightened up and carefully place one of his feet next to a particularly clear print of the girl's shoe. His shoe was slightly larger than the print on the ground.

"What size shoe do you wear?"

"a Ten."

"Put you shoe there, where mine was."

Hank stepped into Gary's print then stepped back. They contemplated the three prints. It was clear in the dusty soil that the girl's shoe's print was larger than Hank's but not as large as Gary's. "What do you make of it," Gary asked Hank. The boy liked to play detective. Gary wondered how good he really was at it.

"Wow, she has really big feet. You know what they saw about women with big feet? They have big..."

"No, Hank, they don't," Gary interrupted.

"I was just going to say 'hands.' People with big feet must have big hands," Hank argued.

"Sure. Whatever. However, the thing is I wear a size twelve boot; you said you wear size 10. She she's bigger than yours but smaller than mine. so maybe a man's size 11. Women don't have feet anywhere that big, and certainly not a slip of a girl like her. She must be wearing men's shoes. But why?"

Hank opened his mouth to reply, then realized he didn't have an answer. He was closing his mouth when Gary said, "back to the car." They drove the rest of the way to the Shopton mall without incident.

Gary followed Hank into the mall and around to the remote arm of the mall where the burger joint, All Meat Patties, was located. Hank hesitated near the entrance. "You're not going to follow me in,, are you," he wondered.

"No, I'll be out here,"" Gary told him, pointing to a bench out in the hall where he'd wait.

Hank was met at the stores' door by a heavy set middle-aged man with a shiny, bald pate. The restaurant wasn't open yet so the man had to unlock the door. Gary watched the two go in and disappear behind the counter. He watched the restaurant for a bit, then sweep the corridor with a glance then turned back to the restaurant.

He alternated between looking at the restaurant and the corridor of the mall. No suspicious activity anywhere. After a time he got up and walked over to a near-by mall directory and found something there that satisfied him, then went back to the bench. After a time a kid Hank's age came out and unlocked the door to the restaurant and propped it open. He began taking the chairs off the tables and wiping down both chairs and tables with a dirty looking rag. Lights came on behind the menu display and the smell for frying meat drifted out into the hall.

Time stretched on. Gary was beginning to worry about how long Hank had been in getting his job interview when he finally saw Hank come out around the counter and walk towards the door. He had a brown shirt draped over one arm. He turned and waved cheerfully back at someone. "See you tomorrow," he said before turning and walking across to Gary. With each step he took after that the smile faded farther from his face till by the time he slumped on the beach next to his bodyguard he looked like a man who had just been told the firing squad would be ready in ten minutes.

"I got the job," Hank said mournfully. "Eights hours a day scrubbing pots and pans."

"It's a start," Gary said

"Ppffff!" Hank snorted. "Mister Palermo, the assistant manager wanted me to take a personality test. When he came back from scoring it he said I'd scored higher on it than anyone he'd ever seen before! He was all set to sign me up for Management school when Mr. Latimore, the owner came by and said that I had to start at the bottom just like everyone else. Maybe after six months he'd reconsider management training. Six month!"

"Think of it as a plan to take over the world, or at least fast food delivery. Six months of Henching, followed by some training, six month Number Twoing, which is what a manager does, and then... The world!"

"Yeah, right.

"Yeah," Gary agreed. "Come on, there's a place I want to check out."

They got up and Gary lead the way back to the main concourse, then back again into one of the lesser traveled wings.

"They gave me a shirt," Hank said, holding it up. The short was a medium brown with dark brown pockets. collar and cuffs. A oval of disturbed stitching on the left pocket showed where a former name badge had been and where Hanks would eventually go. "It's hideous, isn't it?"

""They won't have to worry about employees stealing their uniforms," Gary agreed.

"You know what's funny? Mr. Palmero was very specific about our saying that our burgers was made from 100% USDA Grade "A" 'meat.' Not 'beef' - meat! makes you wonder what's really in it."

"I think we can rule out kangaroo. I don't think the Food and Drug Administration grades kangeroo meat. Horse, I don't know?" Gary said.

"I've had horse," Hank said casually.

"In France?"

"No, the Gobi desert. Pop was on an expedition to find some lost city of scientific marvels in the middle of the desert. We had some Mongols as guides. A sandstorm came up and we had to hunker down for a week. Lost our food in the first gusts. So about the middle of the week the Mongol leader slaughtered one of our horses for food. We had to drink it's blood for water. That was disgusting. Though," Hank went on after a pause, "not as disgusting as having to drink our own pee later on. Thank god we got rescued before they had to kill another horse."

"So what was it like?"

"Kind of like Kudo. String, dry, pretty tough. Gamy. Walrus wasn't so bad."

Gary was about to ask what a Kudu was but decided to let it rest. He put out a hand to stop Hank, though. "Just a word of advice," he said. "Don't tell your co-workers about eating horse, or drinking blood, or drinking piss. You've got me gagging and I'm sort of used to this. You would totally gross-out your co-workers."

"What should I talk about, then?" Hank asked.

Gary considered that for a moment, considering the difficulty of telling Hank what to or not to talk about. "Don't say anything. Just listen in to their conversations, find out what they interested in and just be non-committal about stuff. Don't volunteer stuff. OK?"

Hank looked confused, as he often did when people were telling him to be less Hank-like.

"This is the place," Gary said and Hank looked up to see A small shop with bricked in windows. Across the front was a large sign reading "The Weapons Shops of Isher."

"What's 'Isher'?" Hank asked.

"Let's go in and find out."

The small shop was crammed with guns, mostly rifles and shotguns sitting on racks around the walls. Some behind glass cases, other out in the open, though looped with cable to prevent shoplifting. A glass enclosed counter ran across ther back of the room, filled with hand guns of all sizes. Mounted heads of deer and moose broke up the monotony of the racks of guns but did little to dispel an oppressive gloom about the place. A bell tinkled as they entered the store and a moment later a man came out from the back to greet them.

"Are you Isher?" Gary asked.

"Who, me? No..." I'm Jacob, Jacob Green."

"I was just wondering because the sign out front said "The Weapon Shop of Isher" so I assumed Isher was the name of the owner." Gary explained.

"Nah, nothing like that. I saw the name on a book once, and thought that would make a great name for a gun shop. That's all."

Hank had been looking around the store and noticed a number of signs scattered around the room. One read "The Right to Bear arms is the Right to be Free" another said "An Armed Society is a Polite Society." That last puzzled Hank because he had been around a lot of armed men at various times and had never found any of them especially polite.

"I think I saw that book, too," Gary said. "I'm looking for a gun, saw it once just briefly. It kind of looked like a cowboy's gun, a revolver, but a lot longer, like so," Gary held his hands in the air about a foot apart, "large caliber. Looked pretty old. Oh, and it used black powder. Lot's a smoke and a large flame discharge. Does that sound like anything at all familiar?"

"Could be, could be. Now if you're looking to buy a gun like that I don't have one for sale, but I have something that sounds like your gun in my personal collection. Follow me."

The shopkeeper walked down the length of the glass display cases till he came to the last unit. This one looked a little different from the others. More sturdy looking and when he opened the back of the display Gary could see that the glass was at least a half inch thick. Not exactly bullet-proof grade but more than enough against a bat wielding looter. There were a variety of old guns there, each in its own wooden case, along with cleaning gear, bullets, etc. He picked up one from the back row and placed it on the counter top.

"This is a Colt model P1873. It was made for the US Army from 1873 to around 1890. It's popularly known as the Peacemaker. Very popular gun at the time. It's a .45 caliber bore, using 40 grains of black power to fire a 255 grain slug. It came in three different length. The short form had a four and a half inch barrel. The regular had a five and a half inch barrel. Then there was this, the Calvary edition which came with a seven and a half inch barrel."

"Can I look at it?" Gary asked.

"I'd rather you didn't. Oil from the fingers, you know."

"Sure."

Gary studied it for a minute. It had all happened so fast that he hadn't had a good look at the gun the girl was holding. "Hank, does that look like the gun to you?" he asked.

The blond Venture shrugged his shoulders. "All I really remember is that she had freckles and that the gun looked enormous."

Gary nodded. Turned back to the gun dealer, "It can't be easy to get rounds for a gun like that loaded with black powder," he asked.

"You can get a reloader kit and buy bulk black powder, but you have to get a license for that. Or you can get someone to reload the shells for you."

"Do you? Reload rounds?"

"I don't keep this beauty around just for its looks." the owner said proudly.

"Do you ever have a girl come in for shells for a gun like that? Maybe five foot four or five. Hundred pounds if that, blonde with hair in a pair of pigtails? Young, maybe fourteen, fifteen?"

The face of the gun seller suddenly became closed, suspicious, "Are you a cop?" he demanded.

"No."

" 'cause you look like a cop. You have to tell me if you are," the man insisted.

Gary often wondered how one 'looked' like a cop.

"They don't have to," Hank volunteered. "A court ruling held that undercover cops were permitted to lie about their status in order to protect integrity of their mission."

The man turned an angry look on Hank. "Stay out of this kid, your elders are talking here," he snapped.

"I am not a kid," Hank bristled. He looked for a moment like he was about to leap over the counter and attack the shopkeeper, so Gary laid a restraining hand on him.

"Like I said," Gary explained, "I'm not a cop. I'm a lot worse than a cop." He pulled out his wallet and flipped it open to his OSI ID card and handed it to the man. The man looked at it for a moment than contemptuously tossed it back to the bodyguard.

"Look, buddy, if you're going to wave around fake ID at least make it of an organization people have heard of, like the FBI or ATF. Office of Special Intelligence, License to Kill. What a crock. Go on, get the hell out of my store before I call the real cops!"

"A girl answering that description shot at us earlier today with a gun like the one you've got there. I was hoping to find her before she hurts somebody, I would have thought a civic minded entrepreneur like you would have been interested in helping."

"I said to get out of here," was the man's only response.

"Fair enough. Come on Hank."

They left the shop and walked slowly down the corridor.

"He's lying," Hank blurted. "He knows something."

"Probably."

"You're not going to let him get away with dissing us like that?"

"What can I do? He asked us to leave his store. It's his store, he has the right to refuse to do business with whom he chooses."

"But... Oh! You've got a plan. What is it?"

"Nothing much. I'll just report 'suspicious activity' at this shop to OSI and let the bureaucracy deal with the rest. The way he became suspicious as soon as we started asking questions he's been doing something illegal. He'll find out soon enough that OSI is not a phony-boloney outfit."

"Awesome."

"I'd rather have a lead on that girl. I don't like well armed assassins hanging around ready to take pot-shots at you."

"Yeah, but boy, she was cute."

Gary couldn't stop from rolling his eyes. "You can't tell what kind of gun she was pointing at you but you can tell she was 'cute' - Hank, you're a nutcase."

They walked out into the parking lot. As they neared the X-13 Gary reached into his pocket and pulled out the car's keys. He tossed them to Hank.

"You want me to drive?" the boy asked.

"Now that you have a job you're going to have to learn to drive yourself."

"But there's a girl out there trying to kill me!"

"I'm going to hang around for a next week or so, just in case she tries again but a time is going to come when you have to learn to handle things yourself. I can't be everywhere."

With a grumble Hank opened the doors and they got in. He grasped the steering wheel tightly, then adjusted the seats position, moved the rear view, checked the side view mirror, then readjusted the seat, the rear view mirror and finally with a sigh, put the key in the ignition and turned it on. It took the nuclear pile about ten seconds to bring the boiler up to pressure. He put the car into reverse and, braking every couple feet, slowly backed out of their parking spot into traffic. He shifted into Forward and jerkily moved towards the exit, twitchily making course corrects that moments later required another course correction. Gary wondered how the boys had ever gotten their driver's licenses with driving like that. But by the time the X-13 had reached the county road leading back to the Venture Compound Hank seemed to have relaxed and was driving better.

Gary was letting his mind wander, trying not to think of anything. Since coming to work for the Ventures he had had few chances to just lay back and not think. At times like this it made him long for the old days as a henchman for the Monarch when all he had to do was avoid work.

Through an opening in the trees lining the road he saw a rusty old truck parked well off the road. Alarms where just beginning to go off in his head when a cloud of smoke exploded from near by. "Into the ditch!" he shouted just as a star cratered on the car's windshield.

With a scream, Hank yanked the steering wheel to the side and plowed gully paralleling the road. He stood on the brake locking up the wheels. The heavy car skidded on the fresh grass to a stop.

"Stay put," Gary shouted as he opened the door on his side and rolled out into the knee-high sage alongside the road. He crawled through the grass and brush, trying to outflank the girl who was continuing to shoot at the car. Vaguely Gary hoped that old Jonas Venture, who had built the atomic car had thought to make the cowl surrounding the pile bullet-proof. He didn't wont to have to deal with a radiation leak - or internal damage to the pile.

He was about a quarter of the way around the girl when he heard Hank sing out, "I've got her!" Followed quickly by an "Owww! Let Go! Stop doing that!"

With a sigh Gary jumped to his feet and dashed towards the parked truck. He burst through the last of the brush to find Hank on the ground, the girl, still in daisy dukes and a knotted shirt straddling him, her hands twined in his hair, banging it against the ground. Hank had his hands on her chest, trying to push her off but her grip on his hair was unbreakable.

In a few quick steps Gary was beside the girl, grabbed one of her pigtails and pulled back. As expected, the girl screamed, let go of Hank's hair and tried to grab Gary's hand and pull it loose from her hair.

He lifted her off the ground, holding on to the one pigtail and yelled at her, "settle down." Hank was laying dazed on the ground. A dozen feet away lay the big Colt revolver. The situation seemed secured, even if Hank had once again disobeyed orders. He was going to have to have a long talk to the boy about that.

The girl continued to struggle in Gary's grip. Gary took a good look at her. Her skin was fair, covered with a sprinkling of freckles. Her face was heart shaped with wide lips, currently pulled back in a snarl, and surprisingly white, even teeth. Pale, blue eyes glared at him and judging from her eyebrows she was a natural blonde. No dark roots anywhere. "Stop struggling and I'll set you down," he told her. That only made her struggle more. She got a hand on Gary's hand that was holding her. It tiny in comparison.

But she wasn't trying to pry Gary's hand off. Instead she pulled herself up a little, swung herself back then kicked forward with her over-sized boots, catching him squarely in the crotch.

"Don't let go of the girl," a part of his mind whispered just ahead of a wave of pain that swept over that thought and drowned it. Despite his best intentions he found himself folding into a ball around his injured testicles. The girl dropped from his hand as he fell to the ground. He gritted his teeth to keep from crying out. For a long time he lay there writhing on the ground, eyes squeezed shut.

Eventually the pain lessened and he gasped for breath, then opened his eyes. Hank was leaning over him. "Dude, are you all right?" he asked.

Gary opened his mouth to say 'yeah' but all that squeaked out as a "no."

Slowly he forced himself to uncurl and look around. "Where's the girl?"

"She got away. As soon as you let go of her she ran for that truck and drove off."

"Why didn't you stop her?"

"Dizzy. Things were spinning around. Sorry Gary."

" 's-kay. Help me up,"

Gary was surprised to find that standing up did not make the pain between his legs any less.

"I see she took her gun," he observed. "I was hoping she'd forget that. I wonder why she didn't take the time to finish the job?"

"Maybe she was afraid you'd grab her hair again," Hank suggested.

"Or she was out of bullets? Do you remember how many times she fired at us?" Gary took a step forward and found it ever more painful than standing still. Looking around he couldn't see anything worth investigating. The truck had been pulled off the road at a point where the ditch along side the road shallowed out. It had been parked in a small clearing and she'd come close to the road to await their return from the mall. He wasn't sure how Hank had got so close to her without getting shot. God must love him.

"Come on, let's go,"

Gary waddled back to the X-13 and gingerly lowered himself into the passenger seat.

"You sure you're going to be all right?" Hank asked.

"Nothing that a ice pack and a couple beers won't take care of."

Hank started the heavy experimental car and worked it out of the ditch. The car was so heavy that it sank deep into the soil, threatening to become stuck a couple times but Hank worked the drive selector deftly to rock them out of the worst.

Gary sighed with relief when the car finally climbed onto the pavement and rolled on towards the Venture Compound. The jostling of the car getting back on the road had irritated his already bruised cojones.

"Boy," Hank began, once the car was moving smoothly, "she really got you good."

"Steel-toed shoes," Gary grunted back, trying to find a comfortable position on the bench seat.

"Huh?"

"She was wearing steel-toed shoes. They're a lot heavier than ordinary shoes. Hit a lot harder."

"No offense, but I'm glad it wasn't me."

"None taken."

Hank chuckled. "I got to touch her boobies. They felt... so soft."

"She was trying to bash your head in, Hank," Gary reminded him. "Have a little forethought. If you can touch her breasts, fine. Give her a purple nurple."

"I couldn't do that," Hank said in astonishment.. "A purple nurple hurts like hell. A gentleman does not give a purple nurple to a lady!"

"She's no lady; she's an assassin. And remember what they say about all's fair in love and war? Well, this is war. She knew how to play the game - go for the other's weakness, like kicking me in the nads. The next time she have you on the ground and you've got your hands on her boobs squeeze them like you're mashing potatoes because she's playing for keeps."

"I guess." Hank answered hesitantly.

"Any idea who she is?" Gary asked. "You haven't gone around pissing off any girls lately, have you?"

"You mean like your girlfriend?"

"She not my girl- Yeah, well I guess she still is." Gary sighed, as silent for a moment remembering the golden two weeks they'd gone together before discovering her obsession with killing Hank Venture. It had been the best two weeks of his life. As near as Gary could tell her whole obsessed stemmed from one double date she and Triana Orpheous had had with Hank and Dean.

"She said something about this was for her father," Hank said after a bit.

"Her father? Have you killed anybody that I don't know of?"

"No!" Hank protested with wounded pride. "I may have hurt some of the Monarch's henchmen but I don't recall actually killing anyone. So I don't know what she's talking about.

"Well, you were right about one thing, she is cute, in a sort of spitting mad sort of way."

"Told you so. I am so the Babe Magnet! Hank exulted for a moment, then sobered up. "If only they weren't all trying to kill me."

He was silent for a mile or two before smiling and murmuring "Hank Venture, Babe Magnet!"

* * *

NOTES: The Weapon Shops of Isher is a science fiction novel by A. E. van Vogt. The slogan "The Right to Bear Arms is the Right to Be Free" comes from that book.

Robert A. Heinlein famously said "An armed society is a polite society."


	2. Chapter 2

"Don't make a sound, just keep walking normal-like." The words were whispered in his ear as a hard, round object was shoved into his back.

"Oh, crap, it's you!" Hank Venture muttered and turned around to face the pig-tailed girl with the huge gun in her hand.

"I said to keep walking, natural like," she repeated, shoving the gun against Hank's stomach.

"Or what? You'll shoot me? You're going to kill me anyway, so what's the point of cooperating now? it just puts off my death by an hour or two. Frankly, if you're going to kill me I'd rather you'd do it now it get it over with! Only...

"You don't want to touch off that blunderbuss of yours right here, right now. There are too many witnesses, people would come running at the sound of that thing going off, you could never get away. And there would be the surveillance tapes both inside here and out in the parking lot. They'd have you pegged in no time. So, no! I'm not going with you!"

Hank and the girl was standing around the bend of a hallway about thirty feet from the entrance to "All-Meat Patty" the restaurant Hank had recently started working at. The girl was dressed the same as the last time time she's tried to kill him, scruffy old jeans cut off into daisy dukes, a gingham shirt knotted under her breasts and dirty, old, men's work boots. And the gun, a Colt .45 Peacemaker, according to Gary Fuu, his bodyguard. The barrel was nearly a foot long, six huge cartridges faced out of the revolver, with a yellowed ivory hand grip that seemed oversized in her petite hands. The girl stood about five foot-six and weighted maybe a hundred pounds - with - the massive gun.

"You are such a moron," the girl said. "Two can play that game!" She shifted the leg-iron down and poked it into Hank's groin. "I don't have to kill you here, but I could blow your fricking balls to kingdom come. If people stopped me from leaving I'd just say you tried to rape me. They'd believe an innocent little girl like me. And if not, I'm a juvie. The most they could do is send me up till I turn 21. I can do 5 years, easy. While you - you'll be pissing sitting down for the rest of your life?"

The smug look evaporated from Hank's face as her words sank in. He gave the odds a long consideration, then slowly raised his hands in defeat.

"Put your hands down!" the girl ordered. "I said to act natural-like!"

"Sorry," Hank said and stuck his hands in his pockets to look more casual. His eyes lit up as he felt the Panic Button Gary had given him that morning. The whole day was definitely going down hill since it had started but maybe things were starting to look up.

Gary had been waiting for him when he came down from his bedroom but had just tossed the keys to the X-13 at him then handed him a small disc maybe the size of a silver dollar with a big red button on one side. "It's a Panic Button. Press down on the button if you're in trouble and an alarm will sound on my watch. It's got GPS in it so I'll be able to find you. So, obviously, don't lose it."

"Aren't you coming with me?" Hank had asked plaintively

"There's stuff around the Compound that needs doing. I've been putting it off while accompanying you to your job." Seeing the hint of panic in Hank's eyes, Gary had added "Hey, it's going to be all right. It's been two weeks since that girl took a potshot at you and she hasn't come back. I don't think she will. In any case just remember all your training and you should be all right. Just call if you're going to be delayed even five minutes, OK?"

Then his boss had yelled at him a couple times that day and now this. What were the odds that the one day he didn't have his bodyguard with him this wannabe assassin would show up.

The girl had seen Hank's eye light up when he's felt the Panic Button and demanded to know what was in his pocket. "Nothing," Hank told her. She didn't believe him. Ordering him to take his hands out of his pockets she fished around in them and brought out the Panic Button.

"What's this?" she demanded.

Hank tried to think of a good lie but couldn't think of one. "It's a panic button," he answered. "I'm supposed to press it if I get into trouble."

"So that fat guy you call a bodyguard is rushing to your side right now?"

"Uh, yeah." Hank readily agreed. He actually hadn't had time to press the button. Gary had warned that it had a really strong spring mounded under the button to prevent it from being pressed accidentally.

"We don't need that," the girl said, tossing the button over her shoulder and pushed Hank along. He watched it roll around in a circle for a moment before falling to rest near the wall. He sighed at the lost opportunity, then reflected that it would probably still be there when Gary finally came looking for him and would give him some kind of a clue where he had been picked up and where they were likely going. Of course it would be close to a half-hour before Gary realized something was wrong and a lot could happen in that time. He needed to leave some more clues to where he had been. If only he had some bread crumbs like Hansel and Gretel to leave a trail behind...

They had walked down the corridor and turned towards the exit to the parking lot. The girl was walking close to him but not so close that he could spin and capture the gun before she could fire it. "You mind if I take off my shirt?" he asked as they neared the exit doors. "It gets real hot inside All Meat Burgers and this shirt is starting to reek." When she didn't say 'no' he started unbuttoning the shirt and pulled it off, carrying it over one arm.

Outside she pointed to a clump of trees at the far end of the parking lot. The rusty old truck she had driven the last time she's tried to kill him was parked there.

She lead him over to the passenger side and unlocked the door. "Get in," she ordered. "You're driving."

Hank looked dubiously as the antique vehicle. "If I'm driving can't we take my car? I know how to drive that."

"We're taking the truck," she told him. "Who knows what kind of tracking system you have in your car." The X-13 had been built in the 60s by Hank's grandfather, Jonas Venture, a time long before tracking devices were existed. Hank was pretty sure that the X-13 had none but he wasn't going to argue the point. He got in and scooted across the bench seat to the driver's position.

"Can I roll down the window?" he asked. "It's pretty hot in here."

"Yeah, but no funny stuff," the girl said, rolling down her window with one hand, keeping Hank covered with the other. When she looked away for a second to find the handle for the window, Hank tossed his wadded up shirt out. Hopefully Gary would find it, too, and it would give him some hint of where they were going.

The girl gave him the keys. "Start the truck," she ordered.

Hank inserted the key into the ignition, stepped on the brake and twistd the ignition. Nothing happened. He tried it again and a third time, growing more puzzled each time.

"Step on the clutch in, you moron," the girl finally snapped. "It won't start unless the clutch is in." At Hank's blank look she pointed to the floorboard were a third pedal sprouted to the left of the brake. He stepped on this pedal, found that it pushed all the way to the floor and when he tried the ignition this time the starter ground for a second before the engine took off with the loud knuckling sound of a diesel.

"That exit," the girl pointed.

"Where's the gearshift?" Hank asked, looking for something on the floor.

"There, on the column. Are you stupid or what?" the girl said.

"I'm not stupid," Hank said sullenly. "Ok, where's 'drive."

"It's a stick, there is no 'drive.' Can't you drive a stick?"

"Oh, come on, nobody drives stick anymore."

"It's the easiest thing in the whole damn world. Sheesh! Pull the gear shift towards you then push up. That's reverse. Then let the clutch out easy."

The truck lurched backwards a foot and stalled.

"I said 'let it out easy'!" the girl screamed at Hank, calling him a few other names besides 'moron.'

"That's it!" Hank yelled back. If you think this thing is so damn easy to drive, you drive!" and he hopped out of the seat and started walking away.

"Oh, no you don't" the girl scream and jumped out and run after Hank. She shoved the gun in his face and said in a deadly cold voice, :"Get back in the truck before I shoot that pretty little face of yours off."

It's amazing how big the barrel of a .45 looks when it's barely six inches from your eyes. Hank backed up to the truck and climbed in again.

He started the engine and the girl coached him through easing out the clutch, how to shift from one gear to the next and how to do all this without am excess amount of gears grinding. They turned down the road that lead to the river. There was a good size forest along the river there, as well as a fairly extensive swamp. Hank and Dean had been there once or twice when Brock Sampson, their old bodyguard, had been giving them some survival lessons. Hank was thinking that he should have waited until they were on the road before ditching his shirt. Now he didn't have anything to mark his trail. If only he smoked then he could throw out a series of half-smoked cigarettes of his distinctive brand, leaving a trail Gary could follow. Of course the smell of cigarette ashes always made him cough so it didn't seem likely that he could ever learn to smoke as suavely as James Bond.

The girl told him to turn down a rutted lane that lead into the woods. The ruts lead to a make-shift boat landing. The girl told him to continual straight ahead. There was a bumpy trail of beat-down grass leading farther into the woods. Finally she pointed to a large tree where wilted grass indicated where the truck was parked.

"Roll up your window and come out on my side," the girl ordered. Hank did as he was told. This was exactly the predicament he knew he would be in the instant he started doing what she said. He was stuck up in the middle of nowhere. No one knew where he was and the only hope of staying alive was for the girl to make some kind of mistake, to leave some kind of an opening that he could jump her. And to date she hadn't made any kind of mistakes.

The girl pointed off towards a barely detectable trail that ran into the woods. Aside from these directions she hadn't said a word since getting in the truck. On several occasions Hank had considered trying to start a conversation. The silence weighted heavily on him. But the girl looked so stony faced, so unpleasantly unhappy that he didn't dare break the silence.

The trail lead for a half mile into a swampy part of the woods. As the swamp deepened the trail wandered back and forth, almost circling itself at times as it clung to the highest points of land amid the murky waters. Finally they came to a small raise in the land and there, sheltered under a large oak was a small camper, a vintage Airstream, maybe only sixteen feet long. It's aluminum shell was dull, heavily oxidized, after all these years. Cement blocks at each corner held the camper off the ground. A lean-to grew out from the side side of the camper. The lean-to was closed off at each end by old, heavily weathered plywood. Under it's shelter were piles of stuff, much that Hank couldn't identify but he recognized a drum smelling of kerosene laying on some cross-legs in one corner and next to the door, a table made up from a scavenged door on sawhorses. He wondered about the roll of toilet paper sitting on the table next to the door before realizing that there would be no bathroom in this camper. Somewhere out back must be a latrine.

The girl pointed towards the door and ordered, "wipe your feet." Hank saw a bit of a filthy rug on the ground just before the steps into the trailer. He carefully cleaned his shoes and pushed open the door.

The inside of the trailer was much like the outside. Tidy in places, a jumbled mess elsewhere, with signs of an effort to keep up the place but overall a dingy greyness from years - decades - of caked on grime. The ceiling was so low that he felt the need to hunch down. The girl had no problems standing up straight.

"Sit down," the girl said, pointing to the lone chair in the camper. As Hank sat down she hopped up on the bed that filled the front of the camper.

There was a long silence as Hank waited for the girl to do something: Kill him, let him loose, turn on the TV... Oh, wait. There was no electricity out here, so - no TV. The girl was looking at him more and more uncertainly, as if she had no idea what to do with him now that she had got him here. Hank noticed that she was sitting cross-legged on the bed, the big revolver cradled on her lap. He considered how far away the door to the trailer was and whether he could get to it before the girl could pull up her gun. It looked like she could move faster than he could so Hank remained seated.

Finally, when he could take the silence no longer he asked, "Who are you and why are you doing this?"

"You don't know?"

"Hardly."

"My name is Jill O'Lantern. You killed my father, Mack O'Lantern."

"I killed your father?" Hank asked, mystified. "Who did he work for, The Monarch? Arachnipuss? The Mighty Lobe?"

"The Lobe? What's a lobe? Who are those people?"

"They're super-villains," Hank explained with some surprise. Who didn't know of the Mighty Love, the man with the biggest brain in the world? "They're always trying to kill Pops, or steal his inventions. And sometimes they kidnap Dean and me to extort something from Pops."

"I am nothing like them!"

"You're holding me at gun point," Hank reminded her.

"I just want justice for my father."

"If he didn't work for any of these super-villains, who did he work for, 'cause I'd remember killing somebody if I did."

"You. He worked for you. For Venture Enterprises

"What a minute, that can't be right. I'd have remembered killing someone who worked for us," Hank insisted uncertainly. He didn't remember killing anyone but he'd fired guns at a lot of people who had attacked them over the years so it was entirely possible he had killed someone. "Besides," he continued, "there haven't been anybody working for us in, like, twenty years. I think Pop laid the last of them off before Dean and I were born. How can I be responsible for something that happened before I was born? And you. You're like, what twelve, fourteen, how could you have been born if your father had been killed twenty years ago."

"I'm sixteen!" the girl shouted. "I'm not a little girl."

"Gee, I'm sorry. I didn't know. But you look..." Hank spread his hands to show puzzlement. "You're all arms and legs, you have no waist or butt to speak off. You look like a boy - with boobs," he added quickly. "sixteen year old girls look a little more like..." he made a figure 8 in the air.

"Don't make fun of me. I won't take it from a killer like you. I'm tired of hearing that crap from everybody and their brothers. You, I don't have to take it from."

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry," Hank protested. "I'm not trying to upset you. I'm just a little confused about everything. You say I killed your father twenty years ago - before I was born. Before you were born. That doesn't make any sense!"

"He died last fall," the girl said.

"Oh. I'm sorry. What about your mother?"

"She died when I was young. Something was wrong with her and we couldn't afford to go to a doctor because we didn't have any health insurance."

"Did you take her to a hospital? Because they have to treat anyone who shows up."

"Not for cancer! Not for a long term disease. She couldn't afford any of the fancy stuff and so she died."

I'm sorry about your mother, but at least you had a mother. Dean and I, well, there's there's this crazy woman who says she's our mother but she's so crazy I don't know." Hank looked around the little trailer. "So you and your father lived here for twenty years? Didn't he even try to find another job?"

"Oh, he tried, all right. He tried real hard," the girl said, angrily. "But no one else in the county was hiring people with his skills. And when he took jobs that were beneath him, they were always out to get him. they were always firing him for some little infraction or another. pretty soon he just up and stopped looking for work."

"I wish I could stop looking for work," Hank muttered.

"You've got a job!" the girl complained.

"Sure, washing pots and pans at a fast food joint called "All _Meat_ Patties because they don't want to admit that it isn't all beef! It's a crap job my Pop made me get, and now he's claiming most of my salary for 'room and board.'"

"You shouldn't disrespect your Pa like that."

"This is ridiculous," Hank said. "You want to kill me because your father couldn't keep a job after being laid off from our company. Most people when they get fired just get over it and look for another job. And if jobs are hard to find then they make an effort to keep the job they have. It sounds like your father was a nut-job, every bit as crazy as you. He couldn't keep a job and its our fault? I don't think so."

"Do make fun of my Pappy!" the girl ordered.

"Don't go living in a dream," Hank replied. "Your 'Pappy' obviously had problems but he never sought any help. He could have applied for welfare, food stamps, what have you. But he didn't and now you're living in a shack in the middle of a swamp. What kind of clear thinking it that?" Hank had by then worked himself into such a state that he jumped out of the chair and started towards the door. "I'm out of here!" he told her just before the big Colt Peacemaker exploded.

The sound of the shell detonating in the small cabin deafened him. Stinging smoke filled the room and a spray of fiery grains of black powder singed the side of his face.

"What the hell?" he gasped, looking at the girl, surprised that she had actually shot at him. All he could see through the smoke were a pair of worn old work boot flying through the air. The recoil from the shot had bowled the girl over. Without another thought Hank pushed through the screen door on the camper and burst into running down the path. He put his head down and leaned forward, running as if his life depended on it, as in fact it did. He was well down the path when another shot sounded behind him. The bullet didn't come anywhere close to him, but it spurred Hank to even greater effort. If there was a thought going through Hank's mind at the moment it was amazement that the girl really was trying to kill him. Until then he hadn't really believed he was in trouble.

When a deer track crossed the trail Hank automatically swung onto it. he didn't know or care where it led but it wasn't the familiar trail the girl knew so much better than he did. And there was the hope she might have missed his turning on to it.

The deer track lead up towards a rocky plateau. Hank didn't know what he'd find up there. He hoped there would be cover.

As the track skirted a small meadow there was another enormous boom behind him and this time the thwack-thwack-thwack of a heavy lead round smashing through the brush beside him. Hank saw an opening in the brush and threw himself into the darkness there, continuing to run. he was panting heavily by now, his lungs burning in pain. His legs felt leaden and he stumbled at times on the uneven terrain.

The brush was starting to thin out. The ground becoming increasingly rocky. He saw a boulder up ahead, maybe eight feet tall. He thought it might offer him some shelter from the crazy girl. He dashed around the side of the boulder and pulled up to a rocking halt.

Just behind the boulder the path disappeared into a small gorge. a small stream run over the edge into what would have been an attractive waterfall in more peaceful times. Hank cast his eyes around for a way out. There wasn't any. The boulder rose up to become part of the cliff. A stream came around the side of the cliff before dropping into a large, open caldron, and beyond that the land fell off in a steep incline. He was trapped if he remained here.

Hank started back the way he came, hoping to find another trail or a place to hide away from the crazy girl. He smacked right into her as she came barreling up the trail. They fell to the ground and immediately started wrestling for the gun. They kicked and punched at each other without landing an solid blows, and rolled and rolled over the ground. For a moment Hank thought he had a chance to pull away from the girl. he started to his feet, only to have her jerk his foot out from under him. Falling to the ground he realized that he was head and shoulders over the gorge. He landed on his hip and slowly started to flip around and down into the falls. The girl clung tightly to his foot. His momentum pulled her with him was he fell over the edge and down, down into the rock strewn pool at the foot of the falls.


	3. Chapter 3

It takes one second to fall thirty feet. It's amazing how long a time one second can seem when one is falling to one's expected doom. And yet there is never enough time for one's life to flash before one's eyes.

Of course it might help is one's eyes were open during that second.

Hank Venture slammed heavily into the icy cold pool at the bottom of the short fall. He came bursting out of the water gasping for air and more than a little surprised to be alive. Two yards to his left were several large boulders half-resting the in the water. He shuddered to think how close he came to landing on them. Ahead were a small shelf of dry land. He was about to swim for the shore when he realized that the girl, his would-be assassin who had fallen over the cliff into the water with him, hadn't surfaced. His first thought was to leave her to her fate but immediately was stricken with guilt. Both because she was kind of cute when she wasn't trying to kill him and because his role-model, the comic book character The Bat, would never let anyone die, not even his worst enemies. Hank had to find the girl.

He took a deep breath and plunged down. The water, besides being incredibly cold, was very clear. The pool at the foot of the falls was fairly shallow, maybe only five-six feet. Looking around, he found the girl about twenty feet away, swaying motionlessly on the bottom as the currents dragged her towards the effluent of the pool. The heavy gun clutched in her hand dragged along the floor of the pool, slowing her drift.

Hank caught up with her with a few strokes and slipped an arm under her arms then kicked for the surface. Breaking the surface must have revived the girl because she suddenly started twisting about, arms flailing as she tried to climb on top of Hank in a panic as non-swimmers so often do when being rescued.

Hank recalled what his lifeguard instructor had said to such cases. He struggled for a moment to get her in a sleeper hold and held on until she passed out and stopped fighting. He maneuvered her into a secure hold and kicked for the shore.

He was able to push her half-way on to the land, then clambered out himself and finished pulling her out of the water. He looked around for a moment to see where he was. The waterfall fell into a small gorge thirty feet deep, maybe forty feet wide and sixty long. There was shelf on this one side and sheer walls all around. The water exited through a narrow slit in the rocks. The shelf where he and the girl were was covered in silt, probably from spring thaws when the stream run a lot higher. A tree had falling off the tops of the cliff and lay in a crumbled heap near by. Some small brush had taken root in the shallow soil. It didn't look like there was an easy way out of there. The sun was starting to go down. It had already sunk beneath the top of the gorge sending a heavy gloom over the place where he stood. Maybe things would look better in the morning. For now he would just have to wait to be rescued.

What to do?

He saw the gun clutched in the girl's hand. He wasn't sure how the dunking would affect its ammunition but it wouldn't do for her to regain consciousness still holding a lethal weapon. Hank went to pull it out of her hand and found, to his surprise, that she had a death-like grip on it. In the end he had to peel each finger off the handle, hoping that he didn't break any of them as he forced them back. He was about to throw the revolver in the pool then reflected that according the Gary this gun, a Colt peacemaker, was a heirloom made sometime in the 19th century. It would be criminal to throw away such an antique. So he fumbled with it until he found how to open the cylinder on the revolver and extracted the bullets. He tossed those in the water and set the gun down well away from the girl.

A cold wind whipped down the gorge, reminding him how cold and wet he was. Hank racked his brain for what to do in such a situation. He had had survival training, Boy Scout training, Kung Fu, Judo, Karate. It all kind of got jumbled in his mind. As he shivered the word "hypothermia" surfaced. Of course! He was liable to die from heat loss if he remained in his wet clothes.

He quickly shed shoes, pants, and T-shirt. He considered for a moment then decided that when the instructions for how to deal with hypothermia said to remove all clothing it meant underpants as well. He stripped off his boxers wishing he had a towel to dry himself off with.

Hank looked at the girl, laying unconscious on the ground. In the growing twilight she looked blue and appeared to be shivering. Hypothermia! he had to get her out of her clothes as well. Of course if he had thought about it, Hank might have considered that between her daisy dukes shorts and the gingham shirt tied under her breasts she was already mostly naked, But Hank Venture preferred doing something, anything to having to think, so he started by pulling off her heavy work boots. As the boots came of they revealed that the girl had been wearing six or eight pairs of wool socks in an attempt to make what were a man's shoe fit her smaller feet. The socks were dingy, holey. Socks Hank would have thrown away years before.

Next he untied her shirt and pulled it off. He was surprised to find that she wore no bra under her shirt. Also that it was a lot harder to pull a shirt off a wet, unconscious woman then he had expected. Hank tried to be a gentleman and not look at her breasts but couldn't help himself. His eyes were drawn as if by magnets to the mysteries under her shirt. Her breasts were small but very prominent. About the side of a half lemon, they sat on her chest, firm round mounds with a darker colored nipple jutting into the air. Freckles were sprinkled over her chest.

With a start he looked away then started to work on her shorts.

If getting her shirt off had been difficult that was nothing compared to her pants. Hank had noticed, of course, that they fitted her like a second layer of skin. if she hadn't had such a skinny butt they would have been really hot looking like that. OK, he still found then hot looking if only because of the lack of other girls in his life. But peeling off a pair of skin-tight pants...he was actually lucky that the pants had been cut-off so close to the crotch. If it had had full length legs he might never have gotten them off.

Her underpants had come off with the jeans, As Hank went to untangle them from her pants so both could dry he was at first embarrassed by the thought that he had torn them to shreds while trying to get them off, but soon realized that they had been that way all along. The fabric had torn away from the elastic around the waist in several places as well as from the elastic around the legs. The cloth was thin and dingy with numerous stains that Hank didn't want to think about. He couldn't imagine anyone wanting to wear a pair of underpants like that.

As he was about to lay out her shorts to dry he thought to go through the pockets. Inside he found the key to her old truck, a handful of change amounting to two or three dollars and a plastic baggie with another half dozen cartridges for her gun. Hank was about to throw them into the pool with the other bullets then stopped to think that there might be a need for a gun later on. As long as these bullets were someplace where the girl didn't know about them it would be all right to leave the gun out. Without the bullets she couldn't hurt him with the gun - short of using the gun as a club.

Placing the bullets under a rock some distance away, Hank considered what to do next.

_Prevent heat loss! _

He could cover the girl's body with his, sharing their body heat...

_Start a fire!_

That sounded like a better idea.

But it might take a while to get a fire started since neither of them had any matches. He should find some way to cover the girl while he's working on the fire... Looking around, Hank spotted some bushes growing near the wall of the gorge. He went over and ripped off some leafy branches and laid them over the girl. The leaves would slow the escape of warm air from near her body. It would be a lousy blanket but, he reasoned, it would help a little, and that counted.

From there Hank went over to the fallen tree and collected broken sticks, twigs and small branches. He made a pile of these next to the girl, then went back looking for the kind of soft, half-rotted wood that would ignite easier once he got a spark made.

He found a large section of bark, an inch or so thick that would be perfect as the base for the fire drill he was going to make. And the center of the tree was filled with exactly the sort of punk he was looking for: soft, crumbly, dry. He scrapped a bunch on to the piece of bark, threw on some dried dead leaves as well and went back to the pool side.

He selected a likely looking stick for his drill, pounded a bit of a hole in the section of bark and filled it with the half-rotted wood. He set the point of the stick in the hole and started twirling the stick between the palms of his hands.

He twirled the fire drill for a good ten minutes before pausing to see if he had set anything on fire. He wasn't even sure he had gotten the wood on the bark warm. His palms, on the other hand, were burning and threatening to blister.

Hank sat back on his heels and thought. He had never actually started a fire with fire drill before, he had only read about them in one of his books. On the occasional survival exercises Brock Samson had taken he and Dean on they always had had matches to start their fire. It was a heck of a lot easier to start a fire when you already had a fire going. Hank considered switching to smashing rocks together to get a spark. He reached up to scratch his ear and touched the frizzled ends of his hair where the gun blast that had started this whole fiasco had singed his scalp.

The girl's firearm was so old that it fired black powder instead of the smokeless powder of modern guns. A lot of smoke and sparks came out the barrel in addition to the slug. Maybe there was enough burning powder to start a fire...

Hank made a pile of punk on the sheet of bark then retrieved the bag of cartridges and loaded one round into the gun. He didn't stop to think what effect the gun being wet might have, or whether the barrel had become plugged while dragged along the bed of the pool. He just held the gun close to the pile of wood, cocked the hammer and pulled the trigger. The gun nearly slammed into his face as the recoil sent him sprawling. As the smoke cleared all he could see was a clear patch where the wood had been. The blast coming out of the muzzle had blown the wood away!

He piled up some more of the punk on the piece of bark and put another round in the revolver. Holding the gun farther back and bracing himself for the recoil, he fired again. When the smoke cleared Hank was disappointed to see that the wood had been blown away again, but this time there was a spark or two glowing on the ground. He tried to gather them up and feed a little more wood into the ember but the sparks faded out before setting anything on fire.

Hank didn't like to think but he forced himself to consider what he was doing wrong. It would be a lot easier if he could remove the black powder from the cartridge and maybe set it off with the percussion cap but he didn't have any tools for removing the slug from the copper cartridge, or the percussion cap without setting it off. He would have to keep using the gun. What he needed was a box to keep the punk from getting blown away each time. Maybe if he piled up some rocks...

He searched around for a some cabbage sized stone and piled them into a three sided box that he lined with dried leaves and in the center piled the remaining punk wood. He stepped farther back from his make-shift shooting gallery, took aim and fired.

The bullet ricocheted off the rocks, whizzing past his head, reminding Hank that he hadn't thought of everything. But there were several glowing embers in the enclosure. Hank dropped to his knees, carefully blowing on the embers to get them to flare up as he added bits of dried leaves. The embers didn't go out so quickly this time and the leaves caught fire, then the punk wood. As the fire slowly grew Hank started adding twigs then small sticks. He pulled away the rocks that had roofed over his box so that the fire could grow some more. When the fire looked stable he went and hide the remaining bullets.

He came back to the fire and added a couple short branches then went out to the fallen tree to collect more wood. He piled it up by the fire, then squatted to enjoy its warmth. He couldn't remember when being baked by an open fire felt so good. He looked over at the still unconscious girl and realized that she was too far away to enjoy any of this warmth. He had set up his shooting gallery some ways away from the girl so she won't be injured by flying bullets.

He went over to carry her near the fire. Half way to the fire she started struggling in his arms. She forced herself out of his arms and stood up. "What the hell are you doin- You're naked!" She shouted, getting a glimpse of Hank. "Hey!" this was a scream. "Where's my clothes!"

"Over there, drying."

The girl was hunched over, trying to cover her breasts with one hand and her groin with the other. Her face showed a mixture of anger and alarm. "Why. Did. You. Take. Off. My. clothes" she demanded grunting out each word between pants of breath.

"Well," Hank began, "we fell into the pool there and got wet and you were shivering and I thought you were suffering from hypothermia and the first thing you do for hypothermia is get the wet clothes off the victim."

Hank was puzzled when the girl's look of anger turned to disbelief. "Are you a moron?" she asked. "Hypothermia is when you fall into _freezing_ water. That not freezing water. You seriously thought I was going to freeze to death?"

Hank opened his mouth to reply, then closed it. Obviously telling her 'yes' was not the answer she was looking for. And now that she'd mentioned it, hypothermia did involve falling into freezing water. How could he not have remembered that. But he couldn't just tell her that because she's call him a moron again and he hated it when she did.

But the girl didn't give Hank to answer. "I know what this is all about, you're trying to have sex with me. My Pappy always said all boys ever want from a girl is sex. Well, you're not going to get it! Help! Help!" she screamed into the night. "Rape! Help!"

"That's not going to help," Hank said before realizing those weren't words that would reassure the girl. "Look," he began again, "I'm not trying to rape you. I was just carrying you over to the fire to get warm."

"Then why are you naked? Why am I naked? Don't lie to me. Where the hell's my gun?"

"It's over there," Hank pointed. "But I took the bullets out of it. I didn't want you trying to kill me while I'm trying to help you."

The girl stalked over and picked up her gun, checked to see that Hank had indeed removed the bullets. She shook the gun at Hank nonetheless and shouted, "Don't think you can have your way with me just because you took the bullets out of my gun!"

"Whatever," Hank muttered and sat down by the fire. "What did you say your name was," he asked as the girl picked up her clothes from where he had laid them.

"Jill. Jill O'Lantern. Remember you said it was a stupid name."

"No, I thought your father had a misplaced sense of humor. It sounded like he wanted a boy so he could name you Jack O'Lantern. Which would have be an awful name to give a kid. I like Jill, its as nice name."

"Didn't you think to wring out my clothes after you took them off me?" the girl accused. She twisted her shorts hard and a streak of water ran out of them. She growled irritatingly, wrung out her shirt then carried them over to the fire, sitting down across from Hank. At first she sat down with crossed legs, Indian fashion, then almost immediately uncrossed her legs, stuck them together and sat on her knees. "I'm keeping my eye on you," she told Hank. "Don't think you can get away with anything because I'll kick your balls into the next county if you do."

"How do you know I haven't already," Hank teased.

"Bastard!" The girl jumped to her feet, clutching her gun by the barrell, swinging it back like a club.

"I'm kidding. I'm kidding," Hank protested. "God, you're short tempered. I've been too busy getting this fire going. And anyway I don't think you ought to have sex with someone who's not conscious."

The girl sat back down, scowling, and fiddled with laying out her clothes to dry. "Could you at least put on your underpants, the girl said at last. :I don't want to have to look at your johnson all night."

"You don't have to look," Hank reminded her.

Now it was her turn to go "whatever" and turn away from him.

"You know," Hank said after a few minutes, "I saved your life this afternoon. I pulled you out of that pool when you were drowning. I think you owe me something for that."

The girl look at him disdainfully "Like way?"

"I don't know, maybe like not trying to kill me anymore?"

Instead of answering, the girl picked up a stick and started poking at the fire. She watched the sparks fly up in the air.

Hank watched her for a while, mostly out of the side of his eye because he didn't want to seem too obvious. When he had first seen her her two pigtails had sprouted out of the sides of her head like a couple of crazy horns but now they were drooping down the side of her face. It made her look older, more mature. Not at all like the gawky pre-teen her pipe-stem arms and legs generally made her appear. He wondered how he's feel if his father were dead. Would he have as great as a mad-on for the Monarch if he, someday, were to finally get his father? Or would he let it go as just the way things are in this crazy world of mad scientists and super-villains.

"I'm sorry about your mother and father dying," he said after a time. "I kind of know how you must feel. I never knew who my mother was. This crazy lady came along a couple years ago and said she was our mother - and seemed to know things that only a mother would know, but mostly she was scary crazy. So I kind of understand how you feel, and I'm sorry for that."

"I don't want your pity," the girl answered.

"That wasn't pity, that was sympathy. So you're all alone now? You don't have any aunts or uncles you could life with?

She shook her head.

"You live out in that trailer all by yourself?"

"What of it."

"Don't you get lonely? Don't you want to live in a real house, with a flush toilet, hot shower, TV, the Internet?"

"I'm fine! the girl answered crossly. "I like the camper just fine. It's all mine. It has every thing I need."

"You know Child Protective Services would take of all that for you. Get you a high school diploma, help you get a real job and all that.

"No! Never! Pappy warned me all about Foster Homes. They're snakepits of rape and abuse. I'll kill myself before I ever go into a Foster Home!"

Hank sat quietly for a bit. The girl had spoken with so much heat that he was sure she was telling the truth. He wasn't sure about foster homes being dangerous. The social worker that came out once in a while to investigate his father always seemed like a nice lady. Sincere, helpful. He was sure that if the girl, Jill ever spoke to her she would feel the same way.

He watched the girl poke around in the fire. Her arms were thin but when she pushed against a log on the fire he could see muscles bunch up under the skin. He remembered when they'd wrestled, the last time they'd met. He'd expected to pin her down easily but she'd been the one to pin him down. In the darkness of evening it was hard to see her freckles. He liked her freckles. They weren't as large or as plentiful as the freckles on the Prince he met the time his father had taken them to the Land of the Leopard people. Of course she wasn't as furry as the Lepoard People were either.

Looking at her freckles meant looking at her breasts and that embarrassed Hank. He knew girls didn't like that. So he got up, walked out to the fallen tree and came back with a large branch that he laid across the fire. It was too thick to snap into shorter lengths so he was going to let the fire burn it in two then push the ends into the fire.

"So how are we getting out of here?" the girl asked as he sat down.

"I don't know. I couldn't really see any way out earlier but it was already getting dark. Maybe in the morning we can see some place to scale the rocks. Or maybe Gary will find us by then."

"Gary?"

"My bodyguard."

"Oh, yeah him. What are you doing with a bodyguard?"

"He's to protect my brother and me from people like you."

"Oh." She seemed saddened to be reminded of why they were where they were.

Hank paused for a moment, "you know, this might seem kind of weird, but I almost wish this night wouldn't end."

"And morning can't come soon enough for me."

"I mean, this is like the most time I've ever spent with a woman, talking to her and all that and didn't feel the least bit tongue-tied doing it."

"You don't get out much, do you?"

"No. I wish I did. You're the first girl I've talked to who didn't think I was weird or retarded, or beneath contempt. We just talk back and forth like we've known each other all along."

"I've been calling you a moron all this time," the girl told him, "because I think you _are_ weird, retarded and that stuff."

"But you still talk to me. And I think you're cute. I like your freckles."

The girl dropped the stick she'd been poking the fire with and crossed her hands over her chest.

"Not there. On your face. I like the way they cross over your nose and kind of go up your cheeks. I like your eyes, too. They're pretty when you're not angry at me."

"Oh, pul-lease. I know exactly how I look. I'm as ugly as sin. You're just saying that because you're trying to seduce me. You're trying to have your way with me!"

"No I'm not!" Hank insisted. "I just wish we could be friends, it would be nice to have a friend. A friend who's a woman. Someone who's not my brother."

The girl dropped her hands and picked up the stick again. She poked around the fire, spreading coals around in a way that Hank didn't care for. "And just pretend that all the pain and suffering my Pa went through these last twenty years never happened?" she said finally.

"How will killing me make your father feel any better? He's dead. The only one who's alive and hurting is you."

"That's why I've got to kill you! Killing you is the one thing that will make me feel better about Pa killing himself!"

"He took his own life? Holy Crap, that's terrible."

"Crap! I didin't mean to say that," the girl said clapping her hands over her mouth. After a couple of deep breathes put her hands down, picked up her sticked and poked at the fire some more. "How do you think I feel, coming across him in the field, with a hole in one side of his head and nothing left on the other side," she said in a low quiet voice. "He was all I had and you killed him. Killed him, killed him!" Her voie rose at that. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. She put a hand up to cover her eyes but she refused to sob.

"And you had to bury him and everything. Oh, that's awful. I am so sorry. So sorry."

"I don't want your pity!" the girl screamed.

Hank looked away and let the girl cry in silence. He was mad at her for yelling at him when he was just trying to help. People were always yelling at him when he was trying to help. It got tiresome.

After a time he heard a loud sniff followed by the sound a stick tapping at the logs in the fire. He looked at the girl. Her eyes were puffy, half-closed, her face shiny from tears. "It's not pity," he said, "to say your sorry when something terrible has happened to someone. It's an acknowledgement that their pain is real."

She stared at the fire, tapping her stick against the logs. Hank watched her for a while.

"What's it like to have a mother?" he asked

"What's it like to have a father?" the girl snapped back.

"We both have - or had - fathers. I've never had a mother. I've often wondered what that would be like."

"Ma died when I was young." She said as if that ended the conversation.

"But you must have remembered her some," Hank prompted.

"All I really remember is her arguing with Pa all the time. She hated living in the camper. She was always on him about getting a job, blaming him every time he got fired from one. Complaining because there was never any money. I was kind of glad when she was gone because there was so much less fighting."

"That's it?" Hank wondered. "You never had any mother daughter bonding. She never hugged you, sang you lullabies, played with you?"

"She did sing me the Mockingbird song. 'Hush little baby don't you cry...'" as she started singing a change came over the girl. She stared into the fire, and through it into infinity. Her voice which had a harsh Texas twang softened into something else, Irish maybe. It was surprisingly beautiful. And filled with a lot of pain.

""...'Momma's gonin' to buy you a Mockingbird; and if that Mockingbird don't sing...' She broke off abruptly, blushing. "I guess she sang that to me a lot."

"Pop was never very demonstrative," Hank said, trying not to watch as she rubbed her nose and quietly tried to wipe her eyes. "I don't think he ever hugged us. He took us every where with him, into a lot of strange and dangerous places. I don't know if he was afraid to let us out of his sight or just didn't know what we're do if he left us alone.

I suppose he loves us but sometimes I just don't know. I can't help thinking that if we'd had a mom we'd have turned out better."

"She must have loved him, your mother," Hank added. "To have stayed with your father despite all that fighting."

"I guess she did. All I can remember is the fighting. And then after she died Pa just sort of went to pieces. He started drinking and crying. I had to do everything around the camper for a while."

"But he got better?"

"As long as he stopped drinking,. We couldn't afford booze most of the time so that was OK, but..."

"So what was he like - when he wasn't drinking?" Hank asked.

The girl poked the fire for a minute, sending showers of sparks floating up into the heavens. Then she started talking about her father. She spoke for a long time. He got the picture of a man with false bravadoes struggling with crippling self-doubts all through his life. Getting laid off from the Venture Enterprises had proved to be too much and he had spent the last twenty years of his life avoiding having to be responsible for anything again. He could see how a man like that might have come to take his own life. One last responsibility to lay down. That wasn't how Jill saw it, of course. Her father was a wonderful man with many jokes and stories and anecdotes. His love for her was abundant but when he explained that he wouldn't let her go to school because they would brain-wash her, Hank could see that he was really afraid that Child protective Services would discover she lives in squalid old Airstream camper and take her away from him. He was too proud to take charity or to seek out the welfare his taxes paid for when he was working. But that he thought her father was a jerk was something he knew better than to say."

After a time she ran out of stories about her father. Hank told her some of his stories, about going into space, or being attacked by dead men, giant spiders and ant-men. Most of which she plainly disbelieved. After a time he found his eyes starting to droop so he asked, "you going to be alright there? I think I'm going to sleep."

The girl took her eyes off the fire to look at him. "Aren't you going to suggest that we 'spoon' though the night to conserve body heat? So you can get your grubby little hands on my boobies?" Oddly she seemed to be teasing him about that.

"I've had my hands on your breasts, remember? Gary says I should have given you a Purple Nurple at the time. I told him that wasn't gentlemanly. But then you kicked him in the balls, so I guess Gary was right."

"Do you know how much pain there is being held up by your hair?"

Hank ran his fingers throw his short blond hair before saying, "not really."

"You sure about not wanting to spoon, because it gets pretty cold out here?"

The girl's offer was confusing. She seemed to be inviting Hank to snuggle with her, or was this a ploy to get him close enough for her to kill. He thought they had bonded over the night and maybe she had gotten over her need to kill someone to honor her father. He didn't want to say flat out that he didn't trust her, but he didn't trust her. So he just said. "Nah, I toss and turn a lot in my sleep. I'll sleep over here where I won't bother you." Of course he didn't actually plan to sleep at all that night.


	4. Chapter 4

The sharp rays of dawn woke Hank Venture with a start. He had been trying to stay awake all night to forestall the girl across the fire from carrying out her threat to kill him. Hank was vastly relieved to find that he was still alive.

The girl, Jill O'Lantern was still across the fire from him. The fire had burned down to ashes overnight. She had been sitting with her knees drawn up staring at him over the fire. Sometimes in the night she, too, had fallen asleep and lay on the ground curled up into a ball. Asleep with the anger drained out of her face, she looked very attractive, in a scrawny sort of way. Hank didn't know much about women but he was pretty sure that you weren't supposed to be able to count their ribs.

A cool breeze blowing down into the tiny canyon sent a shiver across Hank's body, reminding him that he - they - were still naked. Well, he had thought they were going to dying from hypothermia after they had fallen into the pool, forgetting that it was only August. He padded over to where his clothes were drying near the fire and picked up his shorts. They were still damp, almost sodden. It came to him that he probably should have wrung them out the night before. He squeezed his clothes as much as he could then spread them out again.

He needed a fire to dry them out so he poked around in the ashes until he found a couple hot embers. He was able to fan them back into life, covering them with twigs and dried leaves. When the fire was going good he placed the last of the branches on it. Then leaned close to it to warm up.

His clothes were going to take a while to dry so Hank decided to take a look around the little canyon. In the morning light he could see it was about sixty feet wide and maybe a hundred and twenty feet long with walls running about thirty feet high all around. The walls looked pretty smooth, not readily climbable. The one break in the wall was where the waters from the falls drained out of the pool. It was little more than a crack in the rock, with luck it might be wide enough for them to crawl through. He walked over for a closer look. The problem was that the crack was six-eight feet out in the lake. It was only about a foot wide. The only way they could get out was sideway and there was no guarantee that the crack didn't get narrower later on. Or how deep the water was in the crack. All he could be sure was that the current going through the crack was pretty stiff.

"Hey, Cute butt."

At the sound of the voice behind him Hank, leaped in the air, staggered back a couple feet, nearly falling the pool behind him and came to a stop in a crouch, his hands extended in a defensive karate pose. He made a couple of tentative jabs before seeing the source of his start - the girl, who had her hands covering her face, giggling. "Boy, you sure are jumpy," she said.

"What do you mean 'cute butt?' I do not have a cute butt!" Hank said insistently, refusing to admit that she had startled him.

"Geeze, sorry. I just thought - you know - you look good from behind. Not like I've seen a lot of boy's butts - or any." Her tone was apologetic.

"Boys do not have 'cute butts'!" Hank objected, with wounded dignity. "Girl - girls have cute butts!"

"But not me, right? Because you said I had a skinny boy's butt?" She was getting a little angry at Hank's attitude.

"I don't remember saying that," he said, straightened up. "I like your - well, I haven't actually looked at it, but I'm sure it's nice. I also like your freckles, especially those here," he run his hand over his chest.

Surprisingly the girl tried to cover her chest. "Don't look! They're ugly."

"No, I think they give you individuality."

"Pappy said they're the devil's mark. They mark the bullet holes where I was killed in a previous life. I have so many of them I must have been a very bad person."

"They're just an inconsistency of the melotonin in your skin cells. Devils or past lives don't have anything to do with it." The words spilled out of Hank's voice almost without conscious volition. From time to time facts would bubble up in his memory which he never recalled learning. At such times they tended to go straight to his mouth.

"So, what were you doing?" the girl asked, changing the subject.

"Oh," Hank pointed to the cleft in the rocks where the waters from the pool were rushing out. "I thought maybe we could get out through that crack. I thought it would be easier than trying to climb up. But..." Hank paused to shake his head. "The crack is barely wide enough for us to get through sideways and I have no idea if it gets narrow or wider beyond. It's too far out to look down it. And the water is so deep and moving so fast I'm afraid we'd be washed off our feet within seconds. And then we have no idea how long that crack runs or what happens outside it. If the water ended up in a calm lake that would be OK but if ends with another falls..." He shrugged.

The girl walked up next to Hank and peered at the crack. "Maybe if you held on to my hand I could lean out and... Nah, it's too far away. So what are we going to do? Wait for your bodyguard to find us?"

"As you know," Hank said accusingly, "I never had a chance to press my panic button before you took it away. And since we fell into the pool my wrist communicator is soaked and won't work. He held up his wrist to show her the watch-like device fastened there.

"That's a phone?" the girl asked in amazement.

"It _was_ a phone."

"I've never seen one so small. Can you text on it?"

"It doesn't even tell time right now. The waterproofing wore off years ago." Hank was pissed off that the two-way wasn't waterproof anymore. He'd mentioned it to his father more than a few time and had been blown off every time. It was like Pop either couldn't care if the two-ways still worked, or didn't want to admit that he didn't know how to fix it. Some of his anger came out in his tone.

"Well, if you hadn't run away..." she began.

"If you hadn't kidnapped me!"

"So what are we going to do now?"

Hank was surprised by her change in tone. He was expecting her to launch into a fight or a tantrum or something. The practical question caught him off guard. He thought about it for a moment.

"Smoke Signals." he answered cryptically and walked over to the brush growing around the edges of their little canyon. "Here, hold these," he said as he started stripping small branches off the bushes.

"You do know that green wood like this doesn't burn well," Jill asked.

"I'm counting on it." Hank said, holding an armful himself. He lead the way back to the fire and started scattering the branches over the hot coals. With a crackle, the green leaves shriveled up, turning brown before smoldering with a heavy cloud of smoke. Hank was careful not to overwhelm the fire with green branches. Smoke filled their little canyon and slowly drifted into the sky.

Between coughs from the smoke Jill asked, "this is your big idea?"

"Yeah. We'll make enough smoke that someone is bound to notice it. Gary, if he's driving around looking for us ought to see it on the horizon and guess that it's me, and follow it to us."

"You really think he'll see this?"

"Sure. It's a pretty calm day so the smoke ought to rise high into the sky. And if Gary doesn't see it, than the Park Rangers will, because, you know, they're always on the look-out for forest fires. And if that doesn't work we can still try to scale the sides of the cliff."

"You really think there are Park Rangers around here?"

"It is a state park," Hank asserted.

"Do you think I could have lived here all these years if there were Park Rangers snooping around. They don't care what happens around here. No one does."

After a moment she added, "which is how I like it."

The smoke drove them away from the campfire. They found a couple of rocks near the falls and sat down. Hank was pleased that Jill choice a rock close to the one he was sitting on.

"So what do we do now?" she asked after a bit.

"We wait."

" 'We wait'?That's it. That sucks."

"I know but sometimes that's all you can do. So why didn't you get dressed this morning," he asked. "My clothes were still wet. but I bet your clothes are all dry."

The girl blushed and crossed her legs. "I, ah, I am not used to being around people." she stammered. "When I'm by myself in my camper I sometimes don't get dressed all day. Why bother, you know what I mean. You just wear your clothes out for no purpose. I guess I just sort of forgot you were here."

Hank wondered why she hadn't rushed to her clothes as soon as she realized she was naked. He would have, if his clothes weren't so cold and damp. The sun, coming through the smoke from the smoldering fire, was pleasantly warm. And he kind of liked sneaking glances at the naked girl. He knew it was kind of pervy, but he's never seen a naked girl - that he could remember.

"What's it like having a brother," she asked, breaking the silence.

"I don't know," Hank began. "I've never not had a brother. I have no idea what it would be like to live alone. We're twins, you know. Though we don't look like it. Dean - that's my brother - takes after Pop. He's the skinny one with the red hair. Pop's nickname used to be 'Rusty,' can you believe it, because he had red hair. I guess I took after our mother, but I don't know. We never knew who our mother was."

"My mother died when I was so young that at times I have trouble remembering what she was like. She taught me to read and do sums. Pappy didn't want me going to school. Said they'd fill me full of all sorts of government nonsense. So that's two things you've done that I've never done."

"I've never been to school, either," Hank said. "Pop had these learning beds in our room. It would teach us stuff while we were sleeping. I've often wondered what it would be like to play with kids other than my brother."

"Yeah. About all I know of the world came from reading my mom's books. She had a whole book of these paperbacks under her bed. I read each and every one of them, oh, it must have been dozens of times each. I guess they're what you'd call Romance novels since they're all about women finding some men who makes them go all faint and stuff. I guess that's where I learned about looking at men's butts.

"You know," she continued after a pause, "I don't want to be disrespectful to my pa, and don't get me wrong, I love living out in nature, but sometimes I wish I could live among other people. You know, just to see what it was like."

"Yeah. I know what you mean," Hank said. "There are days I just wish I could leave the compound and get away from Pop and all his kooky enemies and just be me. You know. And other days I just can't imagine living anywhere else."

Hank's stomach chose that moment to growl.

"You hungry?" she asked.

"Ravenous. I'm so hungry I could eat one of those "all-meat patties" we sell at that place I work at. But... you know - when Pop takes Dean and me on one of his "adventures," Hank made air quotes, "we often end up some place where there's nothing to eat, so I'm kind use to it. What about you?"

"Collecting cans from the roadside doesn't put a lot of food on the table, so I do a lot of hunting. Rabbit, squirrel, possum..."

"possum? That sounds nasty. I shouldn't talk, though, we've had to eat some nasty food on Pop's adventure. Once we were down in Brazil looking for some kind of super-Viaga drug and..."

"What's Viagra?"

How could she not know about Viagra Hank wondered then realized that she must not have a TV in her tiny camper, since there would be no electricity for it to run on. "It's a drug for men who - ah..." Hank crossed his legs to hide a visual display of what viagra does. He couldn't think of a way of explaining it that wasn't embarrassing. "Well, anyway, we were deep in the rain forest," he went on, "when this anaconda tried to eat Pop. Boy that was a riot. Pop was all screaming, the snake was withering all over him. Brock was whaling away with his machete. Dean and I were trying to drag Pop back out of the snake's mouth... Anyway, we finally killed the snake and got Pop freed and he decides he wants to eat the snake. So Brock skins it, chops it all up, cooks it, and we start eating it..."

"Snake. Ewww." Jill interrupted.

"Eh, It tastes like chicken - raw chicken. But, yeah. Dean and I weren't eating much because it wasn't all that pleasant but Pop just kept shoveling it away. Later on Brock said that he was trying to show his contempt for the animal that almost ate him. I guess that makes sense. Anyway, all of a sudden Pop bolts from the table into the bushes and starts hurling. I think he was at it for ten minutes! He'd eaten so much of that snake he'd made himself sick." Hank finished his story with a laugh.

Jill joined in but it seemed like a forced laugh to Hank. Probably all his story about his father encounter with a snake had set her to thinking about her late father. He wished he could have bite his tongue than to make her sad. They had talked a lot the night before. At first warily as one would expect from a victim and their would-be killer. But as time passed and they found things in common they had grown more relaxed, even chatty.

Jill's father had worked for Venture Enterprises but had been laid off twenty years before, before Jill had been born, before, even, Hank had been born. Hank had no idea who had laid off Mack O'Lantern, either his father or maybe even his grandfather, Jonas Venture, Sr. His father never talked much about the business except to complain that it never made enough money. He know there were divisions of Venture Enterprises overseas but not whose idea it was to move there. In any case something about the layoff made Mack O'Lantern snap and he had never been able to find or hold on to a job since. Poverty had driven him to move his family into a tiny, ancient Airstream camper illegally parked in a state park. Jill was born sixteen years ago and never knew any place else as home. Her mother dying when she was young must have made her feel very close to her father.

Then her father had died and Jill blamed the Ventures for that, vowing to kill them as they had killed her father. So she had laid in wait to kill Hank, had kidnapped him from his job the day before. Hank's effort to escape had trapped them in this tiny canyon. The trouble was that Jill's father had committed suicide. It wasn't anything the Ventures had done. Jill had stumbled over his body, which Hank thought had to be really terrible. And she had had to bury him as well. That had to suck.

She had continued to live in the weathered aluminum camper, eking out a living from her can collecting and hunting. Hank actually admired her for that. She was a pretty cool, resourceful girl. If only she wasn't determined to kill him. And it seemed like as a result of their talking last night she might decided to call off her vendetta. At least she had been very friendly this morning. Even happy.

He wanted to say something about that, to say how happy he was to meet her and would like to be her friend.

"Thanks for not killing me last night," he said. He tried to say it lightly. A second later he wished he could have cut out his tongue.

Jill's face clouded, her fisted knotted. "So that's what this was all about. All that stuff last night was a lie! You don't care about me, you don't care about my father, you just want to keep your worthless butt alive! Well your sweet talk isn't going to make me forget my Pappy and what you did to him! You're going to die, Hank Venture, just like you killed my Pa!" She picked up a clot of dirt and threw it at Hank. It broke away on his shoulder, leaving a bit of a welt. She reached for another clot.

"Hey! Stop It!," Hank cried. "Ow, that hurt! I didn't kill your father. I never even met him. Jill..."

The girl had run out of dirt to throw, "where's my gun," said, jumping up and running back towards the smoky fire.

"It's not loaded," Hank tried to remind her.

"I can still beat you to death with it," she yelled back.

"Oh, shoot," Hank cursed and ran after her.

Smoke was low and heavy on the ground near the fire, the green branches still giving up copious amount of smoke. Hank had to stop for a racking cough from the fumes, looking up just in time to see the girl swinging at him with her grandfather's antique handgun. She was holding it by the barrel, trying to hit him with the ivory inlaid handle.

"Hey, you're going to damage that if you keep on holding it that way.

"I don't care," she said, making another round-house swing at him. "As long as I paid you back for what you did to my pa!"

Hank backpedalled a couple time before lunging at her and grabbing the arm holding the gun. They wrestled for possession of the gun for a moment before Jill brought up her other hand and tried to claw at Hank's face. He twisted away from her grasping fingers, and tripped over his, or maybe her feet. In any case he fell heavily to the ground, dragging the girl down on top of him.

They rolled around for a while, each trying to seize hold of the gun. A searing pain in his shoulder told Hank that they were rolling into the fire. He heaved himself as far away from the embers as he could as they continued to fight. Apart from occasional grunts they fought in silence. Hank found that his greater weight was easily offset by Jill wiry strength and determination.

Jill pulled free for a moment, rolling on top of Hank, she raised the gun over her head ready to bring it down on his. Hank throw up a hand to block it and caught her wrist. The gun wavered back and forth as the fought. Hank found a leg free and used it to push him out from under the girl. She wasn't prepared for that and they rolled over with Hank on top. He dropped his weight on her and he pushed her arm with the gun down and as far away from her body as he could. Stretched out like that Hank as able to grab the gun and pull it from her fingers. He tossed it as far away as he could, then had to frantically scramble to capture her other hand which had come up to claw his face. He grabbed it and stretched it out as well. He found himself laying heavily on her, spread eagle, his face just inches from her. She struggled for a minute but couldn't get the leverage to throw him off.

"Will you just listen to me for a moment," Hank pleaded.

"Why are you going to do, rape me?" she hissed back.

Hank realized he was lying on her in an indelicate position.

"Go ahead, did. See if I care. I'll just cut off your balls and stuff them down your throat before I kill you! You pig, you..." she continued with a long list of epitaphs.

"Shut up!" Hank screamed. "Just shut up and listen to me." He yanked her arms out further because it seemed the only thing he could do. She yelped in pain, than quieted down. Hank realized with a start that he could feel her heart beating in her chest. It was beating fast and hard. He had never seen anyone's face so twisted by anger as she was just then.

"I'm not going to rape you, he began, Geeze, where do you get this ideas? That's gross. I just want to talk to you. I'd let you up if I thought you wouldn't try to clobber me again." He paused, looked at the girl to see how she was taking this. He could see her tongue working around in her mouth, trying to scrap up a large dollop of saliva. "Swallow it," he told her. "You spit on me and so help me I will make you eat dirt." She glared back at him but after a moment swallowed. "What?" she croaked.

"Look," Hank began. "I know you're anger. I would be, too, if someone killed my father. And the fact is that every day I wake up with the fear that someone will have killed Pop. He has a lot of enemies so there is a real chance it could happen any day. That's why we have our bodyguard. So I know your anger. And if someone killed my father I would want to kill them, too. So I share your wish for revenge. I'm all right with that. But here's the thing, if someone, god forbid. killed Pop I would know who did it. They'd leave clues at the site, they would be boasting about on the Internet, and the darknets and in the professional publications like Villainous Times. There wouldn't be a single question about who did it. Not like your situation where you don't know who actually killed your father but figured it had to be one of us Ventures. So you've decided that to avenge your father you're going to kill someone who never met your father, never knew he even existed before you started taking potshots at me. That doesn't make you an avenger, that just makes you a common killer. You seem like a nice girl. I enjoyed talking to you last night, and I wasn't trying to trick you into anything. I honestly liked you. I wouldn't know how to trick someone into doing anything. I don't think you want to become a common murderer and have that hanging over your head for the rest of your life.

"Kill the guy who killed your father. I'm fine with that, but you don't know who killed him - oh, wait. You do. You know who killed your father. It was your father. He killed himself. So the person you should be angry with is your father."

"Liar!" Jill screamed. Liar! Liar! That's not what happened. You killed him. You killed him, You..." tears welled up in her eyes and trailed down her cheeks. The sight checked Hank. He wasn't used to other people crying. He wanted to comfort the girl, but didn't know how, or dared release her from his hold. She was whispering "lies, lies," the only sounds she could get out from clenched and trembling jaws.

After a moment Hank began again. "Listen. I know you loved you father. He sounded like a pretty nice man. But nobody is perfect. I love my Pop, too, but there are times when I wonder if he loves me. He's always yelling at us about something. Or there's some hostage situation and he says, 'Oh, take Hank,' like I'm the expendable one. Just just because Pop sometimes acts like a jerk didn't mean I love him less. I think you're father was like that. Maybe he meant well, but at times he could be a jerk. And taking himself away from you at a time when you needed him most ... well, that was inexcusable. Just ... inexcusable. I'm sorry, Jill. I'm sorry it happened it to. But I guess the thing is that you have a right to be anger with your father. And that, well, it's possible to love your father and acknowledge that he was a jerk. I -"

"Hank? Hank Venture!" a voice called from the distance.

"Gary," Hank shouted and sprang up off the girl. He ran out from the clouds of smoke around the smoldering fire to the clearer air near the cliff. "Gary! Down here!," he shouted.

The chunky bodyguard was standing on the same cliff where Hank and the girl had fallen over. Thirty feet separated Hank from rescue, all of it vertical.

"Are you all right?" Gary called down.

"Everything's jake." Hank answered. This was part of an elaborate code he had with the reformed henchman. If he has say 'no' that meant his life was still in danger and the bad guys might be sneaking up on his rescuer as well. If he had said 'yes' it meant he was under observation and anything he said was prompted by his captors. But 'jake' meant that the situation was resolved, everything was safe.

"Great," Gary called back. "I'll secure the rope up here and we'll have you out there in..." his voice trailed away into silence. He was looking at something to Hank's left. Hank looked. Jill was standing there, maybe six feet away. There were streaks on her cheeks where tears had washed away the grim that had accumulated overnight. She wasn't crying now, or scowling or much of anything else. Hank glanced down at her hands to make sure she wasn't holding anything to hit him with. Hands dangle just below the crotch. It reminded him that she was still naked, just as he was still naked. He didn't have to guess what Gary was thinking.

"Look - ah - if I'm interrupting anything I can take a walk down the trail and come back in a half hour...or an hour..."

"It's not what it looks like," Hank called out. "We fell in the water. Our cloths are wet. Just rig the rope and we'll be dressed and ready to go by the time you are done." He turned around and raced back to the fire. His clothes were spread out near it. Jill's clothes were on the other side of the fire. They dressed in silence. Hank considered saying something to Jill but after a moment decided he had already said enough. He noticed that her gun was laying close by. He picked it up and stuffed it in his pants.

"Hey, that's mine!" the girl cried. "Give it back."

"And have you beat me with it, No way."

"I need it to hunt. Without it I'll starve."

"Get a job. I had to," Hank said as he tied his shoes. His shoes were squishy wet, clammy, cold and uncomfortable. He had considered going barefoot but quickly decided that his feet weren't toughened enough for rock climbing. The girl, on the other hand had knotted the laces of her father's work boots together and hung them around her neck.

"I'm sixteen. No one will give me a job."

"Lie about your age."

"Just give me back my gun."

"Stop trying to kill me with it." Hank stood up and started back the the base of the falls. The girl growled angrily and followed.

He got there just as Gary was finished tying a rope to a scraggly tree growing near the stream. He threw the coil over rope over the edge where it slowly unwound as the dropped, before coming to a stop with a slap against the rock face.

Hank caught the end of the rope and pulled it tight before jumping up as high as he could and gripping the rope. He wrapped his feet around the line for support while he reached up higher. Gary had placed knots in the rope every four feet or so, which made the climb easier. When he got to the top Hank ignored Gary's outstretched hand, taking ahold of the rope above the edge of the cliff, before swinging a leg on to the level land and rolling over the edge to solid land. He scrambled to his feet only to immediately bend over, resting his hands on his knees and panting. As such he didn't see what Gary was doing until a voice from down below called up: "Hey, what about me?"

Hank looked up and saw Gary was pulling up the rope.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"We'll let the police pull her out of that canyon." Gary said.

"You can't do that!"

"It'll be less trouble for us. Look she's already tried to kill you twice. This is kidnapping, and she assaulted me with the intent to cause great bodily harm."

"You're going to hold her kicking you in the balls against her/"

"She was wearing steel toed shoes!"

"We can't let the police arrest her, she'll never survive."

Jill continued to call out from the bottom of the falls but the two men weren't listening to her.

"Not my concern. I'm your bodyguard. Putting her in jail saves me a lot of worry."

"Have a heart, Gary. She's an orphan, and a juvenile. Do you know what will happen too her?"

"She a threat. That's all I care about."

"They'll put her in juvie, or send her to a foster home. You know what they're like!"

"I've worked for the Monarch all my life, foster home can't be any worse than that."

"But, but. She's like a free bird. She's live all by herself all her life. well, with her father until last year. She's always done wherever she likes. Prison will kill her. Foster Home will tell her where she can go, who she can talk to, they'll set curfews and yell at her if she's five minutes late! I don't think she even has a watch!"

"That's life," Gary said, coiling up the rope.

"No, that's hell! Anyway, I know her, if we leave her for the police she won't be here when they arrive. She'll try to climb up the rock face, or crawl out that crack at the end of the canyon where all the water drains out. Either way she's sure to hurt or killed and have that on my conscience for the rest of my life."

"Why do you 's trying to kill you."

"We had a long talk last night. I think we came to an understanding. She thought I had killed her father but I explained to her that I had nothing to do with him dying. I think she beginning to accept that her father killed himself."

"Hank, you've got fresh blood on your cheek. It looks to me like you were in a fight this morning. So much for you coming to an understanding with her. We leave her for the police and if she gets killed trying to escape. well, that's what happens to 'free birds'."

"Give me the rope!" Hank demanded.

"What is wrong with you? Oh, god," something came to the bodyguard's mind. "Don't tell you're in love with her because if you do I'll smack you so hard they'll need a telescope to find your teeth."

"Microscope," Hank corrected.

"Telescope. Bang, zoom, to the moon."

Hank grabbed the rope out of Gary's hand and, since it was still tied to the scrub tree, threw it over the edge. "I don't love her. I just think she deserves a chance," he said. He said it out as much to convince himself as Gary.

Gary scowled but aside from standing with his fists on his waist, said nothing.

Jill grabbed the rope as soon as it stopped slapping against the side of the cliff and started climbing up. She didn't have Hank's technique so the climb was longer and closer to failure but at last she reached the rope. She didn't decline Hank's offered hand and ever gasped a quiet 'thanks' as she got to her feet. Hank was about to answer "no problemo" when Gary grabbed one of her hands and tried to twist it behind her back. She gasped and tried to jerk herself free, but Gary had to tight a grip.

He was fishing out a strip of plastic restraint when Jill rotated in the direction the burly man was turning her wrist, spun on her heel and let fly with her bare foot. Gary turned pale even before her foot reached the fork of his legs and he was sagging in a defensive ball. She jerked her hand loose this time and slammed into Hank, pushing him away. He staggered back a bit but not before she had ripped her gun from out of the waistband of his pants.

Hank was still watching her run down the trail towards the road to the boat launch. She ducked into the brush before the bend in the trail and disappeared from view.

"You son of a bitch, why didn't you stop her!" Gary screamed as he slowly unrolled on the ground and climbed to his feet. He was holding on to the family jewels as if they run away if he didn't hold them in.

Hank shrugged. He knew he had done the right thing, but he wondered if he had done the _smart_ thing."

* * *

Author's dithering: I can't believe I took three months to write this chapter since I had it all there in my all this time. In any case I'm torn between marking this story completed or letting it go for another couple chapters. This is the end of the second story arc. I intended to wrap it up with a third story arc but if it's going to take months to finish another chapter perhaps I should stop her and launch another story when i'm ready to wrap up the life of Jill O' Lantern...


	5. Chapter 5

The saying goes: "No good deed goes unpunished." At nineteen Hank Venture hadn't heard that saying and was too young, too naive, despite having a harrowing life, to believe it. Which is why one fine August day he was quietly driving his hover-bike down a seldom used dirt lane, past a rude boat-launch and into a swampy part of the State Park to inevitably make matter worse between him and a certain young lady.

He was using the hover-bike because his other choice, the X-13 atomic powered car, at eight tons, was way too heavy for the soft soils of the swamp. The hover-bike was a little large than a Schwinn, could go over any surface - ever water - and had a top speed faster than a man could run. Also it was perfectly quiet which is a good thing when trying to sneak up on a woman armed with a century old .45 Colt Peacemaker.

Pass the old boat-launch the road became just a trail of flattened grass that wound around the higher points of the land until it came to an old oak tree. A rectangle of dead grass and an oil stain showed when an ancient truck was usually parked. Hank was relieved to see that it was gone. It mean that the girl, Jill O'Lantern, was away scavenging tin cans from the highway, her sole source of income.

Hank parked the bike in front of the small Airstream camper that was her house, turning the hover-bike around before he dismounted so that it would ready for an emergency get-away if need be. The Hover-bike was a spindly U-shaped frame with handlebars and a large headlight mounted at the front. A bike-seat sprouted from a pole in the middle and underneath cross-bars, mounted front and back supported cone-shaped devices that held the vehicle aloft. The cones would shift from side to side, back and forth to maintain the bike's balance, accelerate it and guide it into turns. It was the invention of Hank's grandfather, Jonas Venture, the great inventor and explorer. Hank, at this point in his life would have loved to have a real motor-cycle, one that could tear down the highway at 60-90 miles an hour but his father, who obsessed about him getting hurt, would never allow that.

The Airstream camper was so old that the aluminum surface had oxidized to a dull grayish white. A roof had been build over the side with the door and under its shelter were piles of stuff, some covered with tarps, others out in the open. A drum of kerosene sitting on a trestle gave a pungent aroma to the place. A door on some sawhorses made a table next to the screen door on the camper.

Hank paused to listen at the door. When he was confident that he heard no one inside he opened the door and stepped in. The camper looked the same as it did the one other time he had been there, old and grimy but with some effort to maintain appearances. There was a tiny kitchen at the rear of the camper. A fold-up table and a built in bench in the middle and a bed filled the front. The bed was made but covered with lots of stuff. Hank suspected that this had been Jill's father's bed and that after his death she had been reluctant to claim it as her own.

He didn't pause long. He laid the shopping bag he was carrying on the bench seat where it could be seen, thought about leaving a note, decided against that and left. He was feeling good about himself as he made the highway and cruised at a dignified twenty miles an hour home. He had wanted to help the girl, even though she had taken into her mind that he was responsible for her father's death and wanted to kill him in turn. He thought he had, by giving her something that she sorely needed, tempered her anger at him.

He was sorely mistaken.

[]

"Good Afternoon. Welcome to All-Meat Patty," Hank Venture said, taking a quick glance at the script lying next to his cash register. "How may we 'meat' you up today?" It was his first day taking orders and he was still nervous about getting everything right.

The customer, all three hundred pounds of him, ordered a double-patty, extra cheese, large fries and a diet cola. "As if that would balance out the rest of his order," Hank thought as he pecked in the order on his cash register. The printing on the numerous keys on the panel was half wore off so Hank had to guess at the buttons to push.

He set out a tray, took the man's money and counted out his change. The human road-block shuffled down to the pick-up end of the counter. Hank took another look at the script, pasted a smile on his face and looked up at the next person in line.

He had barely got out "How may we meat you up," when - _wham!_ - he was smacked in the face. The missile was soft, plastic wrapped and not too heavy. Still he flopped to the floor, not so much from the impact but out of training. Hank scuttled up against the counter for safety. He tried to recall exactly what had happened. Hank had a momentary impression of a slender - no, skinny - girl in a large, worn, green dress with long, black shiny hair. A price tag seemed to be hanging from the hair. Again this was part of his training, the ability to recall in detail a scene he had just seen. He had the impression that she looked familiar but what stood out was how her face had screwed up in rage the moment she had seen him.

Oddly, that happened a lot to Hank Venture.

"I don't want your charity," the girl screamed over the counter, then launched another projectile at him. This had a cardboard backing that stung like hell. "And I don't want your pity!"

The voice was familiar. Hell, Hank realized, it was that crazy girl trying to kill him. He wasn't sure why she was throwing things at him, but he guessed she had used up all her ammunition. Next would be the Colt .45 Peacemaker, an antique revolver as big as she was. The particle board walls of the service counter wasn't going to offer any protection from that cannon!

With a scream half terror and half fear Hank vaulted over the counter and flung himself on the girl. They went down in a heap, rolling and thrashing on the floor, knocking over tables and chairs. As he wrestled with the girl, who was incredibly strong for her slender size, Hank wondered where her gun was hid.

"Venture! What the hel - heck are you doing? Get off that customer this instant.!" It was Mr. Latimere the store manager.

"She has a gun," Hank tried to explain as he climbed off the girl and stood up. "She was trying to kill me."

"I don't care if she was the Queen of Sheba, you don't attack customers in All-Meat Patty. I've had it with you, Venture. You're fired. Get out of my store and don't bother coming back. I'll mail your paycheck to you!"

"What?" Hank cried, scowled, then started unbuttoning his brown and grey company shirt, throwing it on the counter. "I don't need this crappy job," he declared, pulling down his t-shirt and stalked towards the store's entrance. He turned at the door and added. "I've meet the Queen of Sheba. She's like a million years old and stands four feet tall. She's a nicer person that you'll ever be!"

Mr. Latimere watched him leave for a moment, shaking his head at another of the boy's weird and incomprehensible comments. Then he turned to the girl picking herself off the floor.

"I'm terrible sorry for what has happened, miss. I don't know what was the matter with that boy. But he won't bother you again here. As a small token for our regret can we offer you anything from our menu - gratis?"

One of the other order clerks came from behind the counter and handed the girl the items she had thrown. He blushed as he held them out to her. "Your - uh - things, ma'am."

The girl grabbed them and stuffed them back into the shopping bag she had been holding. "Thanks," she mumbled, then turned and hurried after Hank.

The corridor was long, wide and high. It ran along the back side of one of the anchor stores of the mall, ending next to the truck docks, which was why the corridor wasn't used much. Another entrance opened half way down to a more congenial part of the parking lot. A nail salon, a wig shop and a couple boarded up storefronts filled the place alongside the All-Meat Patty. The only reason the restaurant survived in such an out of the way place was its low prices and seated dining. Hank was taking long, angry steps towards the mail concourse. The girl had to quicken her pace to catch up. She was a little out of breathe when she finally fell in step with Hank. He tried to ignore her for a minute but with an exasperated snarl, stopped and turned on her.

"What is your problem?" he demanded. "Why are you following me? Haven't you done enough damage already today? I lost my job because of you!"

"I thought you said you hated that job," the girl said, confused.

"Yes, it was a crappy job, but I needed it. It gave me walking-around money for the first time in my life. And it got Pop off my back. For the last year it's been is 'Hank, got a job', 'Hank, get a job', 'Hank get a job.' Well I got a job so he had to shut up. And in another month or so I'd been sent to management school, then I've be the one giving orders, not taking them. I could even have opened my own store - Hankco! The future was all mine. But you had to come in and ruin it!" He stopped and seethed for a moment. "And what's the deal with this disguise?" he asked, ripping off the black wig to reveal her blonde hair underneath. "Elvira?" he asked, referring to the wig, "What did you think this was, Halloween?"

The girl snatched the wig out of his hand and stuffed it back on her head. "I wanted to talk to you," she announced, " but I figured you'd freak out if I showed up in my regular clothes. Who knew you'd freak out anyway."

"You were throwing things at me!"

"I just wanted to return this stuff," she said, slapping the shopping bag at Hank. "But the minute I saw your face I just got so mad..."

"This stuff's for you." Hank said.

"I don't want it."

"You need it."

Now it was the girl's turn to be exasperated. "I've been taking care of myself all my life," she said. "I don't need your charity-"

"It's not charity." Hank insisted.

"And I don't need your pity-"

"It's not pity."

"Then what the hell is it?"

Hank was stumped for an answer. He did pity her, his gift had been charity but how to convince the girl otherwise.

"It's Enlightened Self-Interest!" he declared, remembering a lecture from his father.

"What the hell is that?"

They had resumed walking and had entered the concourse. The place was large, airy, echoing a bit. There was a lot of light from a clerestory running down the length of the concourse. Near-by was a waterfall filling a reflecting pool than ran down half the length of the concourse. High-arched bridges crossed it at intervals. A railing attempted to keep kids out of the water. Seats were built into the edge of the pool. Hank wandered over to these and sat down. The girl sat down a couple feet away. She put the bag next to Hank.

"It's..." Hank waved his hands in the air as he tried to remember his father's explanation. "It's when you do something for someone not because you're being nice to them but because it's good for you."

The girl snorted.

"No, seriously. Look, eventually you're going to be arrested.

"If," the girl interrupted.

"No, when!" Hank corrected. "And when you are the police are going to make you take off your clothes and put on prison garb. And when they do they're going to find out that you don't have any underwear..."

"I do, too!"

"You call that ratty, ripped up thing you were wearing when we went over the waterfall underwear? The thing is, when they find out that you don't have any decent underwear, I'll be known as the kid menaced by a girl who can't even afford clean underwear. I won't be able to show my face in the Boy Adventurers Club anymore. So I bought you some underwear so I wouldn't be embarrassed when you get arrested. So you see, it's not charity or pity or any of that stuff, it's Enlightened Self-Interest."

"Bull."

Hank didn't bother to argue her assessment. He puahed the bag with the pack of six plain white junior miss panties and pack of four white bras, size 28b closer to the girl. "Did you at least try them on?" he asked.

"Why would I try on underwear that I'm not going to keep? Besides, if I open the packages you couldn't take them back for a refund."

"I can't take them back! Do you know how hard it was shopping for these clothes? I had to explain to a nice sales lady why I was standing in the middle of a room full of-" he whispered - "lingerie, fingering panties. And then there was all that time spent trying to figure out what size you are. I had to point to other people and say you were larger or smaller than they were. And guess at your cup-size. I didn't even know bras came in cups."

"They do?" the girl seemed as surprised as Hank.

"I couldn't go back to her and ask for a refund. It would be to embarrassing. If you won't take them I'd just throw them in a dumpster - hey, that's an idea. I throw them away in a dumpster then you can reach in and pull them out. Then it wouldn't be a gift from me, it would be, you know, dumpster diving!"

"You're weird."

"People always say that. After a while it hurts."

"I've never been in a lingerie store," the girl said after a long silence. "I was wearing my Ma's hand-me-downs."

"That's what I figured. Why?"

"I don't know. Maybe Pa was too embarrassed to do what you did. Pa was a great man and I miss him every day I live but..."

Hank looked at her then quickly looked away. She seemed to be tearing up and he didn't want her to know that he knew.

"Pa always wanted a son, and he treated me like a son, which was fine by me. You can't live in a swamp without needing to know how to hunt and fish and trap and stuff like that. I enjoyed it, enjoyed doing anything with my pa. He taught me to read and do sums. But he never went inside a clothing store to buy me underwear that fit. Or tell me anything about being a girl. I envy you for having a mother." she concluded.

"I never did," Hank told her. "There's a woman who comes around and claims to be Dean and my mother, but she's crazy. It's always been just me, Dean and Pop. And Brock. But no one would think of Brock as the mothering type. He used to be our bodyguard before Gary."

"He never told me nothing about being a girl, and then he died."

"He killed himself," Hank corrected.

"Don't remind me."

"Sorry."

Hank sat quietly, not trying to hear the girl snuffling beside him. He wondered what a man was supposed to do in a situation like this. Should he pat her on the shoulder and say, "there, there." Should he give her a hug. Should he offer her a handkerchief? Or should he pretend not to notice her crying. He chose the last. After a time she gave a big sniff and exhaled deeply.

"Anyway, I wanted to give them back," she said, pushing the bag back towards Hank.

"I know you don't want them, but would you at least try them on?" Hank asked.

"Why?"

"I'd like to know how well they fit. I went to so much trouble guessing at your size and all that I'm curious how close I came to getting your size right." Call it scientific curiosity."

"You are so weird," the girl said, but more as an observation than as a complaint. "You want me to try on your underwear right here?" she said indicating the open concourse.

"No. No. There's a lady's restroom down that wing of the mall. You can try them on inside and tell me when you come out how they fit."

"And then you're just going to throw them away?" The girl looked at the bag suspiciously, looked at her sandaled feet for a bit. Her feet were brown, scarred and heavily calloused as if wearing shoes was something she didn't do often. She stood up. "I can't believe I'm doing this," she said, picked up the bag and marched off in the direction Hank had pointed.

The boy trailed after her.

[]

She took longer in the restroom than Hank expected. He was about to peek in and ask if she was alright when she finally came out. "How do women put those things on," she grumbled, tugged at something under her dress. "I was forever trying to get that thing fastened." She said, "and how do women put up with wearing them? It feels so ... restricting."

Hank had sometimes wondered about that himself.

"But does it fit OK" Hank asked.

"How do I know? I've never worn this stuff before."

What about the panties?" Hank persisted. "Too tight, too loose?"

"Oh, I guess they're alright." After a moment the girl added, "it is kind of nice to walk around in a pair of panties that don't threaten to fall down all the time."

"What about the bra?"

"It's just weird having something strapped around my chest like that. What's it for?"

"To keep your boobs from sagging, I think."

"Like I have enough boob to sag."

"You've got a lot more boob than some. I guessed you were like a B cup. It's not too big, is it? or too small?"

The girl unconsciously felt her breasts, plucking at something under her dress. "No they seem to be alright."

That she was still wearing the underwear he'd gotten her was encouraging. Maybe she'd keep his gift after all. "Great! You don't know how happy that makes me feel," Hank exclaimed.

"And you don't know how weird that makes you sound," the girl reminded him. "I'm getting out of here before you ask me to do any more weird stuff."

She turned to walk away, still holding on to the bag with the remaining lingerie. She hadn't taken a more than a couple steps when she was knocked down by a dozen men in dark clothes converging on Hank Venture.

"Don't let him escape," someone called needlessly.


	6. Chapter 6

Hank dodged the first to lunge at him, and tripped the next. A straight-arm sent a third flopping into the air. The girl, meanwhile, was scrambling to her feet, growling under her breath. She slugged the first man she saw in the jaw, sending him off-balance into another of the henchmen. She tried kicking another but her sandals were not the weapons that her father's steel-toed work-boots had proven.

"What about the girl?" someone asked as an arm circled her waist and lifted her off the floor.

"Bring her along. No witnesses."

She was carried out of the fighting and another of the henchmen grabbed her arms, pulled them behind her and looped them with something plastic that he pulled tight. Her flailing legs were captured and bound the same way. She was about to scream for help when the man tying her up pulled out a small canister and spitzed her in the face. She suddenly had trouble breathing and her arms seemed leaden.

"Watch it with that stuff," she heard her captor complain from behind her and then he was jogging with her out the building. Blurry eyed she saw Hank go down under a wave of the black-clad men. Her captor burst through the mall doors and ran to the back of a delivery truck parked in the firelane out front. He heaved her into the back of the empty van. A moment later Hank was thrown in as well. The door pulled down and the truck started off.

Already her head was clearing from the stuff sprayed into it. "What's going on?" she demanded. "Who are those people?"

"Jill?" Hank seemed surprised to see her. "What are you doing here?"

"I don't know. They said something about no witnesses. Does that mean-" there was a catch in her voice "-that they're going to kill us?"

"I don't know," Hank confessed.

"Who are they?"

"Didn't you see the logo on their shirts?" The henchmen had been dressed in black jeans, black sneakers and black T-shirts with a white design across the front. They could have been bouncers at a trendy nightclub.

Jill was confused. "Some kind of mushroom?"

"No. That was a stylized image of a human brain, except for the enlarged cerebral cortex, the frontal lobe. 'The Mighty Lobe' I mentioned him when we were trapped below the falls, remember. He's one of my father's nemeses."

"Oh. God, we're going to die." The girl started crying.

"No, we're not," Hank began but realized that he really couldn't honestly say that.

He began worming his way against the jostling truck bed towards the girl. It was dark inside the truck but not entirely so. A small window opened into the cab of the truck pouring a small amount of light their way.

"Jill," he said when he got close to her, "I'm going to tell you something very important." He spoke low so she had to kept still to hear him. "'I'm this close to wetting my pants."

"Ewww," she said and tried to back away from the boy.

"No, I don't mean it that way. What I mean is that I'm scared, too. If I don't look like I'm scared it's because this happens to me - a lot! And after a while you begin to realize that the only way to come out of this alive is to keep your head on straight, look for an advantage and take it. You've got to stay focused on looking for that opening!"

"That's easy for you to say," the girl complained. "You've got that fat bodyguard to come to your rescue. What about me? I'm on my own."

"Only he's not," Hank said, "coming, that is. They jumped us so fast that I never had time to push the 'panic button.'" This was a silver dollar sized communications device he kept in his pants pocket in case of attack All he had to do was press the big red button on one side to send out a signal with GPS data to his bodyguard's wrist communicator. All of which assumed he'd have time to press the button in the first place.

"Eventually he'll notice I haven't come home from work and start looking but that won't be for another six hours or so. But! If he does find us and come to our rescue, it's a package deal. He'll rescue you along with me. That's the rules of the games. Any rescue attempt rescues all civilians. That means you.

"Great. My life depends on a guy I kicked in the balls," she groaned.

"Where are they taking us," the girl asked after a bit.

"I don't know, probably to be The Lobe."

"What kind of guy is he?"

"Kind of young as super-villains go, maybe his late twenties. He thinks he's the world's smartest man."

"Is he?"

"Yeah, kind of. On the other hand he likes to gamble. He spends all his time when he's not trying to steal Pop's inventions trying to break the bank at a casino in Las Vegas. He keeps trying out new schemes all the time. He can't get it through his head that the rules of the games are set to benefit the bank, not the player and if he gets too good at any game the casino has the right to refuse to let him play. But he doesn't like people pointing that out to him. Also he doesn't like people staring at his head. It's ... large. Bulges over his head a bit It makes him look like a freak. It's funny. He is a freak, he boasts about being a freak but he doesn't like other people telling him he's a freak."

"But what does he want with us?"

Hank tried to shrug but it's not easy with your hands tied behind your back, nor very effective in a darkened van. "Probably just want to use us to blackmail Pop into giving him some secret invention. He hasn't figured out that Pop doesn't bargain with blackmailers. It's like he doesn't care if we get killed or not. Though lately he seems a lot more obsessed with keeping us safe then he used to. Anyway he probably just wants me."

"Then why did they kidnap me?"

"Maybe they thought you were my girlfriend."

"I am _not_ your girlfriend," the girl said emphatically.

"I know that. You know that. I don't know that his henchmen do? But look... It may be to your advantage to pretend to be my girlfriend. It depends on what he plans to do with you. So if I say you're my girlfriend, go along with it, OK?"

"As long as I don't have to kiss you."

"You'd be surprised what you'll do when a gun is pointed at your head. But I don't think it will come to that. The gun or the kissing."

"Where are they taking us?" Jill was beginning to sound a little more in control of her fear.

"I don't know. We've been making a lot of turns so I don't think we've gone far. They're probably trying to shake off any shadows before heading to their headquarters." They suddenly bumped up a ramp and entered a large building. Hank could tell by the change in the sound of the truck's engine. There was a faint echo as the sound was reflected off walls. "I think we're here," he announced.

A moment later the rear gate was shoved up and a couple men climbed in and dragged Hank to a pair of waiting men. They then picked up Jill O'Lantern and carried her to the end of the truck, sat her down, got out, picked her up again and followed after Hank. The van was parked inside a large and empty warehouse. Double doors at the end of the room opened into a smaller, well-lit room with a number of folding tables scattered about. Also what looked like roulette table, a pool table, a professional looking blackjack table.

They were carried over next to a low table with high sidewalls all around. The felt table top was marked off with lines and number that didn't make any sense to either of the two captives. Sitting at one end of the table, the end with the lowest sidewall was a man in the uniform black garb of the Lobe's minions, only this one was wearing a black hoodie with the hood thrown over his head. He was toying with a small cylindrical object attached to a manikin's arm and rolling dice with the other.

The captives where placed on a pair of chairs nearby. The man in the hoodie throw the dice a few more times while they waited, growling with each throw. The dice didn't seem to be bouncing right, not that either kid had much experience in that area. Finally with a grunt of disgust the man flicked the manikin's arm to the side and the dice, without being touched, sailed off the table to land against a wall twenty feet away.

He sat the wooden arm down and turned to face the two captives. He pulled back his hood to reveal a small but pleasant enough face under a bulging forehead. Jill gasped briefly at the sight.

"So tell me, Hank Venture," he began, "how does your Hover Bike work?"

"Magic?"

The Lobe's face purpled and his raised his hand to strike Hank.

"I don't know," Hank protested. "I didn't invent it. My grandfather did. Pop gave my brother and me a couple bikes when we were kids. I have no idea how they work or even what powers them. It could be magic for all I know."

The Lobe lowered his hand and scowled. "You're not smart enough to lie convincingly," he said. "We'll have to see how badly your father wants you back. Maybe enough to explain the principles of the Hover Bike's repulsion ray."

"So you can manipulate the dice in a craps game?" Hank guessed.

"Why, yes! I'm surprised you were able to figure that out. The force projectors I have been working with are too bulky and too crude to be any good at controlling a game of craps. But the repellers on your Hover Bikes look like the epitome of simplicity and compactness. Tell me, do they repel all matter or form a magnetic repulsion with just certain elements?"

Hank shrugged.

"Never mind, your father should be more than willing to hand over the vital details. Having you two boys has been the only singular accomplishment in his life. I calculate that he'll do anything to keep you alive."

"Maybe one of us," Hank muttered under his breath.

The Lobe didn't seem to notice. He was staring at the girl by Hank's side.

"And who do we have the honor of meeting?" he asked.

"Nobody." Hank answered quickly.

"She was talking with the target when we found him. Seemed kind of intimate."

"Oh Ho! A girlfriend, maybe? But no, Hank Venture lacks the social graces to ever have a girlfriend. The probability of him having a girlfriend is about zero-point-oh-one percent. I'm more likely to have a flat tire then he is to have a girlfriend - and I don't even drive!" He laughed in a weird kind of cackling manner.

"What do you know about social graces?" Hank muttered under his breath.

"He killed my father," Jill unexpectedly burst out. "I swore I'd kill him in revenge. But I had to get in close to find out his weaknesses because, you know, I don't have a lot of minions to do my work for me."

"Jill!" Hank exclaimed, shocked by her words."You're going to throw in with this guy? Are you nuts? I thought we had something between us."

"The only thing we had between us was my hate and your body."

Hank slumped in his chair, a model of defeat.

"Bravo!" said the Lobe. "Bravo! You are either the world's best liar or genuinely hate Hank Venture. The probabilities are evenly divided between possibilities. Tell me," he leaned in closer to stare at Jill's face. "How do you feel about us sending Hank's father one of his ears as proof that we have him? I'll even let you do the cutting."

"Ewww!" Jill recoiled. "I want him dead. Not dismembered. I don't like to see animals suffering, even a creep like him."

"Hmmm," the Lobe mused. "Put them back in the truck," he ordered, "while I think about this. Thaddeus Venture is a late-riser. We'll let him have time to eat his Bosco before we spring this surprise on him." He turned back to Jill. "I like your moxie. Normally I prefer a little more meat on my girls but I like what I see. You and I could go places." He raised his eyebrows suggestively.

Jill swallowed. "All I want is Venture dead," she whispered.

"Oh, someone will certainly be dead by the end of this day," the Lobe said walking away.

[]

"What did he mean by 'someone will be dead by the end of the day'? Jill asked after they had been dumped back into the van and the back gate pulled down.

"You've been lying to me all this time?" Hank ignored her question.

"I had to say something. He wasn't buying the idea I was your girlfriend." After a moment she added, "you really don't have any girlfriends?"

"Rub it in why don'tcha."

"I can't believe it, is all. You seem nice enough."

"Of come on, you're the one who's always calling my an idiot, a moron, a perv - oh yeah, and weird. Obviously I'm not anybody's idea of a boyfriend."

"I like you."

"You just said it was all a lie to get close to me, so you can kill me. Every girl in my life has tried to kill me. I was hoping you'd be different."

"I just said that to keep that Lobe guy interested."

"You were pretty damn convincing."

"Pa always said that the best way to lie is to mostly tell the truth."

"So which part was the lie?"

"I don't know. I've been doing a lot of thinking. I'm really confused about how I feel about everything. Right now I just want to get out of this alive. You said we had to look for any chance, any weakness, and I figured if I could get on this Lobe guy's side I could maybe mess stuff up later on and we could escape."

"We're playing a game with the World's Smartest Man? Are you insane?" Hank complained.

"He's not that smart. I mean he's probably pretty clever but that's not the same as being smart. Pa wasn't all that clever, but he was a pretty smart man. He understood people. He could get anyone to do anything he wanted. I doubt this Lobe guy could sell water to a man dying of thirst."

"I'd prefer getting out of here by myself. I know this sounds horribly sexist but you wouldn't happen to have a hairpin on you, safety pin or something."

"Why would that be sexist?" Jill wondered.

"In all the old movies when the hero needed a piece of metal he'd asked the heroine for a hairpin, or a straight pin or a safety pin...They just assumed it was something a woman always had on them. It seemed stereotyping."

"I do have a couple of safety pins on it. They're holding my dress together, 'cause it's kind of large."

"Great! Where?"

"In the back just under my shoulder."

"Good. Roll over so I can get to it."

They both rolled over and Hank scooted up until he touched her bound hands. He squeezed her fingers encouragingly, then wiggled upwards until he found her shoulder and after a little feeling around, found the safety pin. He unclasped it, pulled it out, then started scooting back down until her found her hands again. He felt around her wrist until he found the knob where the one end of the plastic strip had been run through.

"The Lobe is using plastic restraints like a lot of cops are these day. One side is ribbed, the other is smooth," he explained as he fiddled with the plastic. "And one end has a loop you pass the other end through. A stud on the inside of the loop catches on the ribs so that the strip will go in but it can't come out. It's a really simply device, and a cop can carry dozens in the space he once carried a single set of handcuffs. And they so cheap that the fact you have to cut them to get them off doesn't matter. But..."

"Oww!" The girl cried as Hank jammed the end of the safety pin into her wrist.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to," he continued. "If you can jam a straight bit of metal between the stud and the ribbed side of the strap you can slide the restraint back a bit, and pull your hand out. Or you can try chewing throw the plastic but it's really tough. I've tried. Ahh! Try to separate your hands."

He could feel the girl struggling. The restraint had slipped back a few notches. The girl grunted with relief as one hand finally slipped out of the restraint.

"Ok, do me." Hank said. She extracted the safety pin from her restraint and began poking at Hank's wrist binding. She poked him a couple times before she could get the tip of the pin into the business end of the restraint. With the restraint loosened a bit Hank was able to slip one hand free, and then the other. Taking the pin from the girl he attacked the restraints on their feet.

"How are we going to get out of here?" Jill asked as they stood up, flapping their arms to get the circulation going to their hands.

"Trust to minions being sloppy." he replied cryptically. As the girl looked puzzled, Hank walked to the back of the van and placed his hands on the roll-up gate and slowly pushed up. The gate moved maybe an inch, silently.

"See? If they had bothered to throw the latch we would have been SOL but they just pulled the gate down and didn't latch it."

Hank dropped to the floor and peered out of the gap. He must have liked what he saw because he stood up and placing his fingers under the edge of the gate lifted it another two feet. He motioned to Jill to follow as he slipped out the partially opened door and stepped to the ground. Jill was just sliding out of the van when Hank rounded the corner and confronted the guard there. The man was leaning nonchalantly against the body of the van, smoking a cigarette. Hank leaped forward, hand stiffened like a blade and chopped the man in the throat. He went down with a breathy gasp. Hank caught him as he fell, bashed him on the back of the neck, and quietly laid him on the cement, just as Brock Samson had one taught him.

"What's that, Charlie," someone asked from the other side of the truck.

Hank threw himself under the van and rolled to the other side, knocking the feet out from under the guard on that side of the vehicle. The man gave a weak shout as he fell. Hank was on him in an instant, arm wrapped around his windpipe. In a moment he was still.

"Is he - dead?" Jill asked, looking around the van nervously.

"All's fair in love and war," was Hanks comment as he pushed the guard out of sight under the van. He returned to the other side and pushed the first guard under the van, too.

"They'll be alright?" Jill asked when he was done.

"Maybe. Don't know, don't care," Hank said. "They would have killed us if the Lobe had told them to, so it's no skin off my teeth what happens to them. Come on, we got to get out of here."

Jill paused to look at the two dead or unconscious guards one last time before hurrying to caught up with Hank.

Beside the large, roll-up truck entrance was a smaller, personnel size door. Hank was scrutinizing it for contact sensors when Jill caught up. Not finding any alarm system, he pushed open the door and they slipped through.

They were on the sidewalk next to a deserted and rather rundown street. Hank grabbed the girls hand and puled her off at a trot across the street and around the nearer corner of the block. Two and three story warehouses lined the street. Half a block down Hank ducked into an alley and followed it to the other end, took a right to the end of the block, then a left down the next block and another left after that. Jill suddenly recognized where they were. This was close to the municipal re-cycling center where she sold the cans she picked up from along the roadside. "Shouldn't we be going that way?" he asked. "Back to the mall so I can get my truck?"

"That's the first place they'll look. We've got to go away from the mall for a while before circling back to it, try to come in from the far side, where they won't be looking."

"You've got this all worked out, haven't you?" she said, marveling somewhat.

"Like I said, this happens to me a lot."

Zigzagging, they soon worked their way into the downtown area of Shopton. Hank had slowed to walk, trying to look more casual now that there were the occasional pedestrians on the street. Once they were about to cross a street when Hank suddenly pushed Jill back against a building. Looking around his shoulder she saw one of the black clothed minions of The Lobe hurrying down the cross street. They waited until he was out of sight, then hurried down in the direction from whence he came.

They passed a bank and a drugstore before coming to a small restaurant with outside seating. He would have walked on by but in the distance he saw another black clothed henchman. He looked at the building The restaurant featured a large plate glass window with a row of dense ferns in pots along the bottom. "In here," Hank said, pulling the girl after him. He had been holding on to her hand since they had escaped. Normally Jill would have resented the touch but at the moment it seemed infinitely reassuring.

Hank slipped past the Hostess' stand and knelt down by the ferns, looking through the large, feathery leaves for any more henchmen. The one he had seen walked past, then another came from a different direction, running after the first. It looked like they might be holed up here for a while.

He bumped up against one of the tables as he tried to get comfortable. A moment later he heard a familiar, raspy voice barked a single word: "No!"

Hank looked up. A steak knife was poised over his head. The hand holding it struggled in the grip of another's. The hand holding the knife lead up to a woman in a purple dress with lace around the collar and sleeves. A small round hat perched on her head with a giant daisy dangling over her head. She looked like a nanny from an old movie. It took Hank a second to recognize the face. "Kim? Dr. Girlfriend?" he stuttered.

* * *

I had a lot of trouble with this chapter (chapters). I even considered just ending the story at chapter 4 but I had this idea of Hank trying to make nice with Jill O'Lantern only to have it blow up in his face. In the first version Jill comes to the boy's bedroom to throw the bag of panties at him. There was some nice by-play with Dean but the scene didn't lead anywhere and I didn't think it was to wind-up the series. So I moved the confrontation to the mall, and that lead to two different initial confrontations, though both ended with them being captured by the Lobe's men. The other version of this chapter I called "Rousting a bum." Here Jill's been sitting at a table for hours nibbling on a small order of fries, until the boss tells Hank to drive her out by being obnoxious about cleaning around her. Hank finally recognizes Jill under her disguise, plops down at her table and says there's something in her hair, which is the pricetag. She reaches for the bag of panties to throw at him and he jumps her, thinking she's going for her gun. I fluxuated between which version had the most comedic impact, before settling on this version.

Next up, Hank has tea with all the woman who want him dead!


End file.
